We have Trilby bonnets and bonbons, poses and plays, dresses and drinks. Here in America it has become almost as disgusting as the plague of lice sent upon Egypt to eat the chilled steel veneering off the heart of Pharaoh the fickle. The Trilby craze has overrun the land like the “grip” bacillus or the seven-year locust. Here is one description of its American splash (obviously from someone not enamored of what was going on): It sold over 200,000 copies in its first year, and was a big hit in America as well as in Britain. Though he wrote 2 other novels ( Peter Ibbetson 1891, and The Martian 1897), it was Trilby that became a sensation. However, problems with his eyesight prompted him to abandon art for writing as his primary endeavor. He first gained success as an artist, being an illustrator for the famous British humor magazine Punch. George du Maurier (1834-96) is known as an English artist and novelist, but he was of a dual heritage, being born in Paris of a French father and an English mother. The other bestseller in the show, that piqued my curiosity, was George du Maurier’s Trilby , which like the Dickens work, first appeared in monthly installments in a periodical: Harper’s Monthly in 1894. Appearing in 1836-37, by 1879 it had sold 800,000 copies … which may not be a shocking quantity by publishing standards today, but was unheard of then.

One of the first bestsellers - and of course a literary icon as well - was _Pickwick Papers_, Dickens’ first novel. I read a New York Times review of this show, and was struck in particular by 2 of the works mentioned.

The above musings were occasioned by a show, “Victorian Bestsellers”, at the Morgan Library in New York City, that started in January of this year (2007), and will run through May 6.

Lastly, it can be interesting to see what “ripples”, if any, might still exist in the popular culture from the initial sensation that the bestseller caused. Second, a bestseller from long ago, since by definition it had a big audience, can illuminate the popular tastes, preoccupations, and prejudices of the time. First, a past bestseller can show us what life was like back then - better, I think, than can some classic from the same period, which often draws us more to itself as a book, for its genius, than to an involvement with the period it describes.

With so many books to read out there - innumerable classics, plus the latest all-the-rage books which are clamoring for attention, not to mention the relaxing “comfort reading” of reliable mystery series – why bother to read a bestseller, with no particularly outstanding literary merit, from more than 100 years ago? I can think of at least 3 reasons.

Trilby by george du maurier