During the last seven years of his life George Du Maurier wrote and illustrated three fantasy novels with the barest touch of science in each of them. Though each of the novels is firmly rooted in the London and Paris of the middle 1800s, each also includes elements that in some way set the main characters apart, letting them rise above the difficult circumstances connected with their daily existence. In two of the novels this ability to transcend normal patterns of life gains for them also an authority to deliver a message of hope to a world that has lost faith in traditional religion and in the goodness of society. In a third he created the villain Svengali, a name long associated with those who misuse mesmerism or hypnotism for power and profit or with manipulators in general.

The name Du Maurier comes from a fantasy of George's...