Lodge populates his novel with several of the most famous figures of English literature from the time of the book's setting in the late nineteenth century.

The novel opens with a framing device wherein we are shown what is happening in the London home of the dying novelist at the beginning of World War I.

One of the servant staff in James' house has taken a crude but sincere interest in discovering what her employer's books are all about and takes to reading one of his more famous stories, The Beast in the Jungle.

This story, whose hero is obsessed by a paranoid belief that his life will be marked by an unknown catastrophe, provides the opening for the novel proper to begin.

While du Maurier and Trilby have all but faded from the public view, James' body of work has continued to attract readers worldwide and his position as one of the most important figures in literature is now secure.