'One book... stimulated the poet beyond all others; it became, in a way, a key to the rest of his reading for some time to come. This was George du Maurier's "Trilby". It was not so much the work itself - though John Masefield enjoyed it more than any book he had read until then - which played so prominent a part in forming his tastes, but the other works which George du Maurier put John Masefield on to... Whatever book "Trilby" mentions John Masefield bought... On the oblique recommendations in "Trilby" he read the "Three Musketeers"; Sterne's "Sentimental Journey"; Darwin's "Origin of the Species"'.