1894. With illustrations by the author. Artist and writer, Trilby is his best remembered work. The novel begins: It was a fine, sunny, showery day in April. The big studio window was open at the top, and let in a pleasant breeze from the northwest. Things were beginning to look shipshape at last. The big piano, a semi-grand by Broadwood, had arrived from England by the Little Quickness (la Petite Vitesse, as the good trains are called in France), and lay, freshly tuned, alongside the eastern wall; on the wall opposite was a panoply of foils, masks, and boxing gloves.