George du Maurier

Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella Busson

George Louis Palmella Busson Du Maurier (dyōō môr´ēā), 1834–96, English artist and novelist, b. Paris of a French father and an English mother. He studied chemistry, but later turned to art for a livelihood. In spite of the loss of one eye when he was a young man, he became a successful illustrator ...

Du Maurier, George Louis Palmella Busson

George Louis Palmella Busson Du Maurier (dyōō môr´ēā), 1834–96, English artist and novelist, b. Paris of a French father and an English mother. He studied chemistry, but later turned to art for a livelihood. In spite of the loss of one eye when he was a young man, he became a successful illustrator and in 1864 joined the staff of Punch. His novels include Peter Ibbetson (1892), successfully dramatized in 1915 and later made into an opera by Deems Taylor (1931) and Trilby (1894), the story of a young model who becomes a great singer when hypnotized by the musician Svengali.

See biography by L. Ormond (1969).