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Journals and Letters

Frances Burney (1752-1840) established her reputation with her novel, 'Evelina' (1778). After a period in Queen Charlotte's court, she and her husband, Alexander d'Arblay, were interned by Napoleon and lived in France until 1815. Widowed in 1818, she spent the rest of her life in London. 
Peter Sabor is Professor of English at Laval University, Quebec. Lars E Troide is Professor of English and Director of the Burney Papers Project at McGill University, Montreal.

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

Evelina is a tale of wounded female sensibility amidst the delights and torments of polite society

Frances Burney (1752-1840) spent her youth in the midst of the London society which included Dr Johnson, Edmund Burke, Sir Joshua Reynolds and the Blue Stocking Circle, as well as members of the aristocracy. She published Evelina anonymously in 1778 and the revelation of her authorship brought her immediate fame. In 1793 she married General d'Arblay, a French refugee in England. She and her husband were interned by Napoleon and lived in France from 1802 to 1812. 
 
 
Margaret Anne Doody is Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities and Professor of English at Vanderbilt University.

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 grandmother, and the rakish Sir Clement Willoughby, who torments the naïve young woman with his unwanted advances. And while her aristocratic father refuses to acknowledge her legitimacy, Evelina can hold no hope of happiness with the man she loves. Published anonymously in 1778, Frances Burney's epistolary novel brought her instant fame when the secret of its authorship was revealed. With its ingenious combination of romance and satire, comedy and melodrama, Evelina is a sparkling depiction of the dangers and delights of fashionable society.

Frances Burney

The Penguin English Library Edition of Evelina by Frances Burney 
 
'O Sir, how much uneasiness must I suffer, to counterbalance one short morning of happiness!' 
 
In this comic and sharply incisive satire of excess and affectations, beautiful young Evelina falls victim to the rakish advances of Sir Clement Willoughby on her entrance to the world of fashionable London. Colliding with the manners and customs of a society she doesn't understand, she finds herself without hope that she should ever deserve the attention of the man she loves. Frances Burney's first novel brilliantly sends up eighteenth-century society - and its opinions of women - while enticingly depicting its delights. 
 
The Penguin English Library - 100 editions of the best fiction in English, from the eighteenth century and the very first novels to the beginning of the First World War.

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