ABSTRACT
When George Du Maurier established himself in the mid-1860s — and in his mid-thirties — it was primarily as a 'social pictorial satirist'. Though Du Maurier had published both poetry and prose during his time with Punch, he still surprised his friends when, in 1891, he produced a novel, and such an unusual novel as the illustrated supernatural romance, Peter Ibbetson. Peter Ibbetson concerns a man who has grown out of an ideal childhood on the Continent into the realities of adulthood in England. However, while this outline reflects Du Maurier's own experience, the protagonist's fitful trajectory is far more painful than his own. In fact the adult Peter Ibbetson connects with only one person, the beautiful and virtuous aristocrat Mary, the Duchess of Towers, whom he first admires from afar at the concert, and later meets through Lady Cray, though only once.
