Trilby by George Du Maurier

Trilby is a novel by George du Maurier and one of the most popular novels of its time. Trilby O'Ferrall, the novel's heroine, is a half-Irish girl working in Paris as an artists' model and laundress; all the men in the novel are in love with her. The relationship between Trilby and Svengali forms only a small portion of the novel, which is mainly an evocation of a milieu but it is a crucial one.