Frances Burneys Evelina

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Frances Burney (1752–1840) was the most successful female novelist of the eighteenth century. Her first novel Evelina was a publishing sensation; her follow-up novels Cecilia and Camilla were regarded as among the best fiction of the time and were much admired by Jane Austen. Burney's life was equally remarkable: a protegee of Samuel Johnson, lady-in-waiting at the court of George III, later wife of an emigre aristocrat and stranded in France during the Napoleonic Wars, she lived on into the reign of Queen Victoria. Her journals and letters are now widely read as a rich source of information about the Court, social conditions and cultural changes over her long lifetime. This Companion is the first volume to cover all her works, including her novels, plays, journals and letters, in a comprehensive and accessible way. It also includes discussion of her critical reputation, and a guide to further reading.

A forlorn English diplomat. A forgotten yet legitimate daughter. A stuffy society intent on keeping outsiders out. Steeped in the new wave of romanticism in the late 18th century, ‘Evelina’ tells the beloved story of a young lady’s entrance into the world. Evelina must learn to navigate the layers of 18th-century England. And although she has all the desirable traits of a young woman, being cast a ‘nobody’ by Mr. Lovel is sure to tarnish her shine. A marriage is required of her. And fast. Can she secure a suitable bachelor? During a time when society was less than kind to the wants of women, Frances Burney’s ‘Evelina’ remains a much-loved eighteenth-century novel. Sweeping readers off their feet for nearly 200 years, ‘Evelina’ is ideal for fans of Netflix’s ‘Bridgerton’ and Keira Knightly’s ‘Pride and Prejudice’. Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. Her work spans the hugely popular ‘Evelina’ and ‘Camilla’, both which remain much loved eighteenth-century classics today. Mistress of the robes to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III’s Queen, Burney married a French exile, leaving her stranded in France for much of her career. She is thought to have foreshadowed the likes of Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thickery.

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 years interned in France with her husband Alexandre d'Arblay during the Napoleonic Wars, she captured the changing times around her, creating brilliantly comic and candid portraits of those she encountered - including the 'mad' King George, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and a charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. She also describes, in her most moving piece, undergoing a mastectomy at fifty-nine without anaesthetic. Whether a carefree young girl or a mature woman, Fanny Burney's forthright, intimate and wickedly perceptive voice brings her world powerfully to life.

Evelina is a novel by Frances Burney. A vibrant, humorous, and seductive account of the delights and dangers of trendy life in late eighteenth-century London.

Reproduction of the original: Evelina by Fanny Burney

Evelina, the first novel by Frances Burney, published in 1778, enjoys lasting popularity among the reading public. Tracing its publication history through 174 editions, adaptations, and reprints, many of them newly discovered and identified, this book demonstrates how the novel’s material embodiment in the form of the printed book has been reshaped by its publishers, recasting its content for new generations of readers. Four main chapters vividly describe how during 240 years, Evelina, a popular novel of manners, metamorphosed without any significant alterations to its text into a Regency “rambling” text, a romantic novel for “lecteurs délicats,” a cheap imprint for circulating libraries, a yellow-back, a book with a certain aesthetic cachet, a Christmas gift-book, finally becoming an integral part of the established literary canon in annotated scholarly editions. This book also focuses on the remodelling and transformation of the paratext in this novel, written by a woman author, by the heavily male-dominated publishing industry. Shorter Entr’acte sections discuss and describe alterations in the forms of Burney’s name and the title of her work, the omission and renaming of her authorial prefaces, and the redeployment of the publisher’s prefatorial apparatus to support particular editions throughout almost two-and-a-half centuries of the novel’s existence. Illustrated with reproductions of covers, frontispieces, and title pages, the book also provides an illuminating insight into the role of Evelina’s visual representation in its history as a marketable commodity, highlighting the existence of editions targeting various segments of the book market: from the upper-middle-class to mass-readership. The first comprehensive and fully updated bibliography of English and translated editions, adaptations, and reprints of Evelina published in 13 languages and scripts appears in an appendix.