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“Du Maurierness” and the Mediatization of Memory

George Du Maurier’s second novel, Trilby (1894), refers to its heroine’s refreshing appeal as “Trilbyness”; in this article, “Du Maurierness” describes the author’s well-noted ingratiating rapport with the consumers of his illustrated fiction and cartoons. Focusing on Du Maurier’s first novel, Peter Ibbetson (1891), the essay shows how this charming immediacy draws on an abiding cultural fantasy of transparent media technologies. The novel’s protagonist clairvoyantly reconstructs the past so that he may consume music, art, and history; this ideal of “dreaming true” idealizes the technological mediation and commodification of memory. As novelist and cartoonist, Du Maurier consistently celebrated the possibilities for media technologies to extend the self, even as they eroded embodied memory, the unconscious, and conventional experience.