Leaving the secluded home of her guardian for the first time, beautiful Evelina Anville is captivated by her new surroundings in London's beau monde - and in particular by the handsome, chivalrous Lord Orville. But her enjoyment soon turns to mortification at the hands of her vulgar and capricious g[...]
Novelist and playwright Frances (Fanny) Burney, 1752-1840, was also a prolific writer of journals and letters, beginning with the diary she started at fifteen and continuing until the end of her eventful life. From her youth in London high society to a period in the court of Queen Charlotte and her [...]
'Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him! O these fashionable people!' Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical, and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late eigh[...]
First published in 1796, Camilla deals with the matrimonial concerns of a group of young people-Camilla Tyrold and her sisters, the daughters of a country parson, and their cousin Indiana Lynmere-and, in particular, with the love affair between Camilla herself and her eligible suitor, Edgar Mandlebe[...]
Fanny Burney's Evelina was written in secret and published anonymously in 1778. The story of a young woman entering a society that is seemingly designed to threaten her success, Evelina is an example of the epistolary genre popular in the 18th Century.[...]
"Contexts and Contemporary Reactions" illuminates eighteenth-century culture with selections from conduct books for women. Extracts from Burney's letters and journals and five contemporary reviews are also included. "Criticism" presents a superb selection of critical writing about the novel. The cri[...]