SOURCE: “Artists, Models, Real Things, and Recognizable Types,” Studies in the Literary Imagination, Vol. XVI, No. 2, Fall, 1983, pp. 7-34.

In the following excerpt, Banta briefly discusses why Du Maurier's Trilby is superior to Henry James's “The Real Thing.”

… Two years after the appearance of [Henry] James's “The Real Thing,” Trilby burst upon the reading public in Great Britain and the United States.¹ George Du Maurier (who planted the “germ” for James's 1892 story in his friend's mind) had also offered another story-line to James; but James turned it back to Du Maurier. The result was Trilby, a publishing success of the kind James never managed to bring off.

What does Trilby have as a narrative that “The Real Thing” does not? In many ways they share similar elements for public interest: a setting (artist's studio, professional model) and a situation (which is the real thing?) But the differences are...