Du Maurier

Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella Busson, whose French grandparents settled in England during the Reign of Terror, was born in Paris in 1834. In 1851 he came over to England, and for a time studied chemistry at University College, London, but soon returned to Paris with a view to making art his profession. After some years in the atelier of M. Gleyre, and in the schools of Antwerp and Dusseldorf, he started as a designer of wood engravings in London, working first for Once a Week, then for the Cornhill Magazine, and finally joining the staff of Punch, of which he is still a member. He illustrated, moreover, Thackeray's Esmond, and Ballads, Jerrold's Story of a Feather, Foxe's Booh of Martyrs, and Mrs. Gaskell's Wives and Daughters. It is, however, through his clever and genial sketches, ridiculing the foibles and phases of English society, that he is best known. A series of' his Punch drawings was published in 1880, and many of them were exhibited in 1885. In 1891 he published a novel, Peter Ibbetson, followed in 1894 by Trilby, which immediately achieved extraordinary popularity, particularly in America. It was dramatised, and met with great success in that form.

In 1896 Du Maurier suddenly died. His last work, The Martian, was published posthumously in 1897.