Man, you learn something new every day:
The immortal evil of Svengali, whose many graphic portraits in the book, both as man and as spider(!) were so convincing as to cement his character firmly in the psyche of fin-de-siecle Western Civilization. Indeed, the first film adaptation of the novel was a 1922 effort entitled Svengali.
Also the bit about the DuMaurier children being the models for the kids in Peter Pan – I did not know that!
I love the Gothic Melodramatic Victorian illustrations … yum!
