La Svengali

Female singer from the George Du Maurier novel Trilby, set in 1850s Paris. First published as a serial in 1894 in Harper's Monthly, it was published in book form in 1895.

Trilby O'Ferrall, a tone deaf, half-Irish laundress, she falls under the spell of Svengali, who through hypnotism, turns her into the talented singing sensation "la Svengali," but only when she is under his hypnosis.

The novel gave us the term "Svengali;" partly inspired Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera (1910); and named a hat called the trilby.