Evelina, Or, the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World

I read "Evelina" because of Miss Burney's supposed influence on Jane Austen. I found a comedy of manners, all right, but the comedy was pedestrian, the motivations nothing like those in Austen, the characterizations quite lacking when compared to Austen's.I know it does no favor to compare something to Austen, but given the context, I make free to do so. Burney's humor is a one-note plink to Austen's rich and concordant arpeggio.

Evelina does not wear well with time, unlike Austen heroines. In fact, Evelina herself is very wearing. She is prone to tongue-tied shyness (which comes across as vapidity); she is utterly dependent on others for her opinions (Elizabeth Bennett would kick her to the curb); she prefers to faint, blush, weep, and vacillate between humiliating embarrassment and embarrassing humiliation than assert herself or withstand an importunity (Emma would wash her hands of her).What possessed Ms Burney to ever try to make a heroine out of such unheroic material, I don't know. How she contrives to get (or if she ever does get) Evelina, the perpetual ingenue into competent adulthood I don't know either, because I'm 70% through the book and am feeling the feelings that Elizabeth and Emma would feel.I am not surprised that the world of literature did little note nor long remember Evelina's entrance into it when the likes of Elizabeth and Emma made their respective entrances.

I rated this a solid "B" after I read it. Now, less than 2 years later, I cannot recall a single thing about it.

Wow. This book had me enthralled, staying up all hours of the night, turning page after page. The labyrinthine predicaments in which a young woman could find herself ensnared in the 18th century were dazzling and ghastly! Men are sinners or saints in this book and the sinners are truly some of the most covert (and overt), villainous, slime balls ever entered on the page. If you've read and enjoyed the works of any of Mrs. Burney's contemporaries or anyone who came after for 100 years, give or take, you can't possibly dislike this book.

This 1778 novel reminded me of Georgette Heyer and Jane Austen, except for the epistolary writing. Despite the somewhat predictable plot, the satirical social commentary is a lot of fun (especially for those who are familiar with the social mores of Georgian England).

The first two thirds of this or so are rape culture as horror story: every single man Evelina meets corners her with importunities. If she rejects him politely, he ignores her and carries on; if she tries to walk away he stops her, or goes with her, and carries on; if she resorts to other means she's scorned (by the world and even herself in hindsight) for her impropriety and it results in a new man accosting her with even greater rudeness. And then the first man returns another day unperturbed.

I lose track of how many people end up seriously pursuing her this way: at least five (Lovel, Merton, wossname, Sir Clement, and Branghton Jr) not to mention all the nameless men in the garden maze etc. It escalates unrelentingly and -- okay, I was less frightened for her than absolutely outraged at the men and her so-called friends and society at large, then and now.

Anyway, then the romance started being more important and so the focus turned to clarifying her parentage, and that was all fine and sweet; the resolution - or more precisely the problem - turned on introducing a hitherto-unknown petty villain, but okay. Evelina and her beau are pretty adorable together once she gets to know him as a person and not just as the one man in the world who isn't actively sexually harrassing her.

I'll admit that reading 18th century fiction is sometimes harder than I'd like it to be. The authors either don't know, or just don't abide by, the rules of fiction that we're all used to. But more and more often I'm struck instead by the sheer joy and verve that animates 18th century novels, and that often seems to have gone missing in the twentieth century--and, obviously, this very much the case with Evelina. There's not a whole lot of unity to the tale, and there are plenty of scenes that Burney includes for no reason other than that they're funny and or mortifying (e.g., random monkey attack towards the end of the novel. No, really.) But it turns out that the funniness, sentiment and mortification of these scenes is more than enough justification. Burney is funnier than Fielding, more touching than Richardson, and a better writer than everyone but Swift at his best--and this is her first novel. I'm looking forward to the others. If you're really into Austen, and can handle some rougher edges and a more satirical narrator, this is a great book for you: Evelina herself is the Great English Heroine a few years after Clarissa, and a few years before Lizzie Bennett.

The most interesting part of this book, though, is the way Burney plays with the modes of eighteenth century fiction: she gives us satire, sentiment, farce, social commentary, bawdy wit, and sententious BS in almost equal doses. And most impressively of all, you can sense that Burney is in total control of all of them, recognizes that each mode lines up well with a way of life as much as with a literary fashion (sometimes this is made obvious in the novel, as Mrs Selwyn stands for satire and Villars stands for sententiousness), and is willing to give each a say--before, ultimately, coming down on the side of Selwyn's satire and Evelina's proto-LizBennettian irony (which itself develops throughout the book rather than being, as in Austen, constant from the start of P&P). She wields a kind of authorial control that very few twentieth century anglophone authors can (Anthony Powell, William Gaddis, J. G. Farrell and Muriel Spark come to mind as possible comparisons).

PS: this edition is great, too--lovingly and helpfully annotated and introduced.

A novel of letters with its bits of humor, sensitivity of relationships, and a bit of satire of the manners of both the privileged and the lower classes.

Written more than thirty years before Austen’s first novel was published, it concerns eighteenth century society rather than nineteenth century. As such, I found myself constantly at a loss. Before reading this book, I thought I had a good handle on the manners of the period. I know the difference between a barouche, a phaeton, and a curricle, and that a lady would never stand up and leave a conversation, and that men knew classical languages and women, only modern. And yet, I was utterly confused by Evelina. (The following block of text contains spoilers, so beware.)A major piece of the plot is that Evelina (a young girl only just out into society) receives the following note:

"To Miss Anville.
"With transport, most charming of thy sex, did I read the letter
with which you yesterday morning favoured me. I am sorry the
affair of the carriage should have given you any concern,
but I am highly flattered by the anxiety you express so
kindly. Believe me, my lovely girl, I am truly sensible
to the honour of your good opinion, and feel myself deeply
penetrated with love and gratitude. The correspondence you
have so sweetly commenced, I shall be proud of continuing;
and I hope the strong sense I have of the favour you do me
will prevent your withdrawing it. Assure yourself, that I
desire nothing more ardently than to pour forth my thanks at
your feet, and to offer those vows which are so justly the
tribute of your charms and accomplishments. In your next
I intreat you to acquaint me how long you shall remain in
town. The servant, whom I shall commission to call for an
answer, has orders to ride post with it to me. My impatience
for his arrival will be very great, though inferior to that
with which I burn to tell you, in person, how much I am,
my sweet girl, your grateful admirer, "ORVILLE."


After reading this, she is horrified and flees London, overcome with shame. WHAT? Ok, so an unmarried woman would not correspond with an unmarried man to whom she was not related or engaged. But she’s so shocked that she says, “As a sister I loved him;-I could have entrusted him with every thought of my heart, had he deigned to wish my confidence: so steady did I think his honour, so feminine his delicacy, and so amiable his nature! I have a thousand times imagined that the whole study of his life, and whole purport of his reflections, tended solely to the good and happiness of others: but I will talk,-write,-think of him no more!” Yeah, that’s what I want in a man—feminine delicacy and brotherly love. Eew. Then, she shows the letter to her guardian, the milquetoast Mr. Villars, who says, "I can form but one conjecture concerning this most extraordinary performance: he must certainly have been intoxicated when he wrote it." "That a man who had behaved with so strict a regard to delicacy," continued Mr. Villars, "and who, as far as occasion had allowed, manifested sentiments the most honourable, should thus insolently, thus wantonly, insult a modest young woman, in his perfect senses, I cannot think possible.” WTF, dudes? God forbid the man you love should actually *write* to you, or in any way communicate his affection. Oh no! Some time later, after Evelina and Lord Orville have reconciled, her guardian sends a fire and brimstone letter, writing,

“Awake then, my dear, my deluded child, awake to the sense of your danger, and exert yourself to avoid the evils with which it threatens you:-evils which, to a mind like yours, are most to be dreaded; secret repining, and concealed, yet consuming regret! Make a noble effort for the recovery of your peace, which now, with sorrow I see it, depends wholly upon the presence of Lord Orville. This effort may indeed be painful; but trust to my experience, when I assure you it is requisite.

You must quit him!-his sight is baneful to your repose, his society is death to your future tranquility! Believe me, my beloved child, my heart aches for your suffering, while it dictates its necessity.”

Because clearly, falling in love MUST NEVER HAPPEN. You must be calm and passionless at all times. If you like someone, you must flee their company! How did anyone get married in these days? You can’t go up and introduce yourself—you must hope to be introduced by some mutual respectable friend. You must not dance with any one partner more than a couple times a night, nor may you find yourself in intimate conversations with anyone of the opposite sex. You cannot write to your love, not even the most innocent and affection-free of notes. You cannot hint that you like someone, until you actually ask them to marry you. Only *after* you are engaged may you show any hint of affection or partiality, or indeed, write or talk to your fiancee. ARRGH!

Reading a romance set in a different century is really a trip. As a reader, I usually know who is being cast as the romantic lead, who is secretly evil, who will unexpectedly assist the main character, etc. But in this book, all the signals I rely upon were gone, or meant something else entirely. The man who seeks out Evelina’s company, befriends her friends, and tries to make her happy, is apparently a dissolute and foolish rake. The man who is cold, thinks of her as a sister, and has nothing to do with her for 8/9ths of the novel, is her love interest. His very coldness and “lack of partiality” is what is explicitly stated (by several characters) as his most romantic aspect. Her guardian, Mr. Villars, swears that the outside world is too indelicate and dangerous for her and tries to keep cloistered forever in the country, with only him for company. The first ten pages of Evelina show him refusing to allow Evelina out of his sight. Among many creepy assertions, he writes,
“She is one, Madam, for whom alone I have lately wished to live; and she is one whom to serve I would with transport die! Restore her but to me all innocence as you receive her, and the fondest hope of my heart will be amply gratified. “
He clutches her to his bosom all the time. When she writes about feeling affection for another man, he responds, “my Evelina,-sole source, to me, of all earthly felicity. How strange, then, is it, that the letter in which she tells me she is the happiest of human beings, should give me most mortal inquietude!” That reads as serious jealousy to me. Then Evelina’s father (who abandoned her mother many years ago) writes “It seldom happens that a man, though extolled as a saint, is really without blemish; or that another, though reviled as a devil, is really without humanity. Perhaps the time is not very distant, when I may have the honour to convince your Ladyship of this truth, in regard to Mr. Villars and myself.” Which again, reads to me that Mr. Villars is not what he seems. And yet, through to the end, all of the characters continue to think Mr. Villars is the most moral and high-minded of men. He is never revealed to have ulterior motives. His counsel is much sought after and well regarded. Weird.

Overall, Evelina is a very fun read. I could hardly put it down, and I’d definitely recommend it to anyone. Nevertheless, it contains some very creepy messages. Evelina’s beauty is praised, but what everyone finds the most attractive about her is her timid inability to say what she thinks or be negative in any way. She constantly gets into trouble (and in fact, is almost raped) due to her naïve and bashful nature, yet it is exactly what everyone likes best, and what critics of this book call and exceedingly moral message. Any character who speaks clearly (Captain Mirvan, Mrs. Selwyn) is thought of as very uncouth. Neither character has patience for the long, drawn out methods of polite society, and mock the pretentions of the fops and would-be aristocrats. Mrs. Selwyn is particularly effective at exposing the ignorance and foolishness of Evelina’s companions, and so of course she is described as unpleasantly masculine and rapidly shut out from truly nice society*. I have some very strong feelings about this book, and I’m not the only one—apparently there have been FLAME WARS about this novel, which is freaking awesome.


*'"I have an insuperable aversion to strength, either of body or mind, in a female."

"Faith, and so have I," said Mr. Coverley; "for egad, I'd as soon see a woman chop wood, as hear her chop logic."

"So would every man in his senses," said Lord Merton, "for a woman wants nothing to recommend her but beauty and good-nature; in everything else she is either impertinent or unnatural. For my part, deuce take me if ever I wish to hear a word of sense from a woman as long as I live!"

"It has always been agreed," said Mrs. Selwyn, looking round her with the utmost contempt, "that no man ought to be connected with a woman whose understanding is superior to his own. Now I very much fear, that to accommodate all this good company, according to such a rule, would be utterly impracticable, unless we should choose subjects from Swift's hospital of idiots."

How many enemies, my dear Sir, does this unbounded severity excite!'

I picked this one up because it said “World’s Classic” on the cover and I’d never heard of it. Evelina is a young (17) orphan girl entering society (the subtitle is “or a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World”) in 1778. She goes to Balls, Operas, and Plays. She encounters a Rough-Mannered Sea Captain, a Rakish Aristocrat, Comical Foreigners, Venal Bourgeoisie, a Mysterious Scotsman, a Noble Lord, and some Ladies of Negotiable Virtue. After some turns of fortune, she is discovered to be an Heiress, marries the Noble Lord, and all Ends Happily.
Reading a novel like this is almost like reading science fiction about the social habits of space aliens. The customs of the time are so different from what we’re used to that the characters might as well be Martians. The class distinctions are ironclad; not one servant in the book has a name (they’re “the maid”, “the footman”, “the coachman”, etc.). There is, of course, almost no mention of the underside of London life at the time; there are no poor people, no criminals, no dirt, no squalor (I say “almost” because Evelina does meet some ladies who are no better than they should be, and it is assumed at one point that one character has written a letter while intoxicated.) Oddly, for a time in which religion is much more important than nowadays, none of the characters ever goes to church (perhaps it’s just so natural that it’s assumed). The epistolary style is an exotic antique (although it was used, probably for its anachronistic value, in the recent The Egyptologist). The morals of the time can be amusing; it’s horribly improper for a young lady to dance with a gentleman unless they’ve been introduced, which creates a sort of chicken-and-egg problem; who does the first introduction? For some odd reason, (perhaps the formality of manner) the whole thing reminds me of The Tale of Genji; there’s a similar glimpse into a very different world.
Reading something like this, in addition to is value as literary and social history, raises some questions about our own society. What will we look like to people 200 years hence? Will some of our cherished values seem laughable? Will the people of 2206 gasp in horror because we allowed abortions? Or because we didn’t fully support a woman’s right to choice? Will they roll on the floor in hysterics over the prurience of Sex in the City, or be disgusted by its permissiveness? Will our clothing styles be prudish or pornographic?
No Jane Austen, but at least three stars for the entertainment value.

I used to be an 18th c. scholar, so this book is high on my list of favorites. There are so many things I could say about it, but they have probably all been said. To be quick about it, Evelina is a striking social comedy. Burney's characters are exaggerated, which distinguishes her from, let's say, Austen or other more recent comedy of manners novelists. It's this exaggeration that really sold me on the novel, because Burney pulls it off! The reader believes the story. The reader also believes the social commentary about desire, gender roles, and sensibility, and the degree of philosophy that exists behind the story just takes it to a whole new level. Evelina is a epistolary novel, which is pretty typical for the period. It is also presented as true. Again, this is typical as fiction wasn't necessarily a respected medium.

Delightful, satirical, melodramatic, comical....all of these adjectives accurately describe Frances Burney's feminine 18th century coming of age tale. Our protagonist, the naive, pure Evelina enters the brash, hypocritical, backstabbing, and often dangerous society world after a very sheltered childhood. The plot unfolds via correspondence between characters and moves rapidly between settings, plot twists, appalling behavior and satirical commentary of the social mores of the time. Wonderful read. It's one of those during which 400 pages fly by!

As always, it is difficult to review a classic novel. On the one hand, you must consider the context in which it was written; on the other, you must consider its effect on a modern reader.Evelina provided direct inspiration for Jane Austen. Written in the late 18th century, it came before the Regency period, before the Victorian era, before those periods in English literature that we typically associate with the sentimental novel or the comedy of manners. And indeed, Evelina was a precursor to most of them and should best be viewed as such.To a modern reader, the heroine is insipid, passive, naive to a fault. She takes only a very reactive role in her own life, and in many cases fails to act in a way that we would consider only common sense. Her relationship with her adopted father is one that seems submissive beyond all reason. But instead of taking these elements as making the story an inferior one, we should instead see it as a mirror of the times, and choose to learn what the manners were according to the characters' violation of and adherence to them.By the way, after 350+ pages, it's hard not to start writing in the roundabout, 18th century style.I enjoyed the book, although I treat it more as a learning experience than casual reading. It's no Pride and Prejudice, but then again, there may not have been an Elizabeth or Darcy had it not been for Evelina.

Evelina, or Care in the Community, Eighteenth Century StyleI must confess that my sole reason for reading Evelina is decidedly tenuous – the characters Madame Duval and Captain Mirvan are referenced in Barbara Cornthwaite’s delightful Austen companion novel, Charity Envieth Not – but the reviews on Amazon lead me to believe that my literary detour would be enjoyable. Well, as for that, I will say that Fanny Burney is occasionally witty, and that some of her maxims and caricatures still apply today, but for the most part I struggled to stay awake. Austen was right to mock sentimental novels like Evelina and Belinda, which usually feature pathetic heroines, implausible plot devices where all the characters turn out to be related to each other, and quote poetry at length. I suffered through Celestina, battled through the first volume of Cecelia, and now I would like a badge that says ‘I read Evelina and survived!’Evelina Anville – and never was there a truer alias for such a blockhead – is a very romantic heroine. Her mother died a ruined woman, abandoned by her wealthy husband after eloping to France, and Evelina was raised for most of her seventeen years in quiet country retirement by a devoted guardian. When the story opens, two interested parties are keen to take Evelina under their wing, and ‘finish’ her education in London. The least attractive candidate is Evelina’s maternal grandmother, the voluble and vulgar Madame Duval, lately arrived from Paris to claim her young relation. Mr Villars, Evelina’s surrogate father, arranges with Lady Howard, an acquaintance of Evelina’s late mother, to save his ward from such a damaging association, and Evelina is shipped off with Lady Howard’s daughter, Mrs Mirvan, to spend time in London. The Mirvans and Evelina visit all the popular attractions, balls, ridottos and gardens in the capital, but London was apparently a small world in the late eighteenth century and Madame Duval wastes no time in finding her estranged granddaughter and forcing an introduction. Crusty old seadog Captain Mirvan hates ‘Madame Frog’ on sight, and the two engage in some vastly amusing verbal dingdongs that would have made Austen blanch. Mme. Duval and Captain Mirvan aside, Evelina’s adventures are tediously dull and repetitive. The girl is a ninny (‘my intentions are never wilfully blameable, yet I err perpetually!’ she wails) - even in the historical context of the novel - yet all the young beaux fall in love with her on sight. Lord Orville is smitten from the first meeting, and ever after follows her around, watching her make ridiculous social blunders and embarrassing public faux pas. (Even I know the rule about not dancing with another partner after rejecting a gentleman’s invitation!) She is forever finding herself alone with irritating and persistent suitors like Sir Clement Willoughby, who like to grasp her hand and declare how much they adore her. I wouldn’t mind, except that the reader is obviously supposed to find Evelina’s innocence and artlessness similarly enchanting, whereas her constant dithering only made me want to slap her. The epistolary form of the novel is pointless on two levels – one, most of the letters are from Evelina herself (‘EVELINA – CONTINUED’), so why not just write in the first person and have done, and two, when does she find the time to write such detailed, word-for-word confessions of her idiotic behaviour to Mr Villars? She also tells him far too much, and barely waits for a reply before tagging on another episode.There are a few amusing characters, including Mrs Selwyn, Evelina’s rather forthright companion in Bristol who scares all the men with her biting satire, and Evelina’s lowly Branghton cousins in High Holborn, but I found Lord Orville a suitably insipid match for our heroine, and Sir Clement decidedly creepy. If I was writing a modern version of Evelina, I would have her smack the idiots’ heads together and leave them to get on with it – the two rivals spend more time asking her about the other man than paying attention to Evelina. Also, the melodramatic yet predictable disclosure about Evelina’s father and half-brother is the best example of why the fanciful plots of these novels are so laughable today – Austen handles illegitimacy and inheritance with far more subtlety. Evelina is the equivalent of a Catherine Cookson potboiler, where the kitchen maid finds out that she is in fact an heiress and can marry the lord’s son after all.Well, at least now I know who Madame Duval and Captain Mirvan are, and I didn’t pay a penny to read Evelina on Kindle! Losing a week of free time was just about worth the effort.

It took me quite awhile to get into this book, but my sister enthusiastically insisted that I read it. Evelina, which was written in 1778 and influenced the writing of Jane Austen, is the story of a girl who is coming out into society. This book is written in a flouncy, dramatic style. I can't picture this book being quite right any other way, even though the writing never exactly impressed me. It was also written in the form of letters, which allows Evelina (the main character, if you hadn't gathered that already from the title) to narrate in first person. Other characters also sometimes exchange letters, allowing the author to give voice to other characters besides her heroine. It was unusual, but I didn't exactly care for this aspect of the writing style, either.Evelina is a dreadfully irritating character. I absolutely loathed her and wanted to slap her. She was incredibly flighty and timid, and I can't imagine anyone possibly liking her. When she first meets Lord Orville, he seems exceedingly interested in her, though I can't fathom any reason why. She is too shy to speak a word or even look at him, and in the middle of their dance, she runs away, because she is so afraid. For the rest of the night, she is the embodiment of the essence of bad company, distancing herself from all conversation and running and hiding from everyone.Evelina is constantly running away from the tiniest of things (which aren't even problems of negative situations) because she is so very afraid. I have to wonder what she would do if presented with an ACTUALLY frightening instance. I liked the character of Lord Orville, even though I had to wonder what he could possibly see in our shallow heroine. His jealousy when Evelina is speaking to another man was endearingly funny, even though I couldn't believe how Evelina could be so stupid as to not realize what was going through her admirer's mind.The other men who seek Evelina's attentions, notably Sir Clement Willoughby and Mr. Loval, are also comical, especially Loval.The beginning of this book was pretty dry, and so was the middle. The end of the book, which suddenly struck up a flurry of events with mistaken and unknown identities, babies who were switched at birth, and other such things, was entertaining even though it seemed a bit rushed into.This book was average - it was funny at times, but I couldn't bring myself to enjoy it all that much.

Great fun, if a little clumsy in parts. Burney obviously had technical problems with the different voices needed for the epistolary form, so the book ends up as essentially a first-person narrative by Evelina with occasional letters from other characters interspersed here and there. But this doesn't matter: although she is sometimes an irritatingly dense character, Evelina is always a very lively narrator. The comic characters are great as well, even though they are all a bit stagey. The plot races along and the resolution has a very theatrical quality about it: you can just imagine an audience groaning with pleasurable vexation as they discover who are the long-lost siblings, and which babies were switched at birth...If you look at this as a stepping-stone from Richardson, Smollett and Fielding to the fiction of the 19th century, there's a lot to engage with. Something I found very interesting was the representation of class. We normally think of Georgian society as grandees at the top, peasants and the urban poor at the bottom, and everyone else more-or-less at the same level in the middle, but in this novel the plot relies heavily on the contrast between the social standards of Villars and the Mirvans on the one hand and Mme Duval and the Branghtons on the other. The former are minor gentry, and model their behaviour and values on those of the aristocracy; the latter are in trade, and are much more free and easy in their manners (for instance, the Branghton girls can go around unchaperoned with young men, whilst Evelina and Molly Mirvan would never think of doing so). The interesting thing is that Burney is describing a period when these two groups exist closely together, multiply linked to each other by marriage, and characters like Evelina and Captain Mirvan find themselves moving (albeit sometimes uncomfortably) back and forth between the two. By the time we get to Dickens and Thackeray, this gap has become a lot bigger.If you come to this novel expecting something like mature Jane Austen, as many people seem to, you'll be disappointed. The humour is clumsier, relying on slapstick rather than irony; there is too much going on; we don't have time to identify with the characters' real problems. On the other hand, if you read it on its own terms as a first novel by a clever young woman in her twenties - late 18th century chick-lit, if you will - you can get a lot of pleasure from it.

I read this as part of my degree in English Lit, and have to say that for me it was (gasp!) less entertaining than Jane Austen. I think that the form and style is so removed from my twenty first century position I found it difficult to get any grasp as to why the characters were as they were, and what motivated them. This is more a fault of mine than it is of the author, but still, Austen proves that this kind of 'manner's novel' can be done better, if only a little.

I was so excited when I found this book in my local library as I had known Fanny Burney's writing had been an influence on Jane Austen's own writing. I was not disappointed, even though the book started out a bit slow for my liking and the means of introducing Evelina's background was a bit contrived. By focusing the story on a young, sheltered girl entering the world at large for the first time, Burney cracks open that world and captures all the manners and customs of that time and place. Whether intended or not, I find it ironic that while the story is written mostly in Evelina's hand, her character more often than not is at a loss for words. Although Jane Austen later improved upon much of Burney's style and technique, I am still mightily impressed with Burney's talent, especially at a young age and particularly because that talent was not encouraged by her family. I am disappointed that her earliest work, Caroline Evelyn, was burned at her own hand. I would have looked forward to reading it, but as it is I am contented to one day (hopefully soon) read her other works.

Let me put it this way: After doing a second year of a Masters in Literature, and having read Robinson Crusoe, Pamela, Clarissa, Tom Jones, Tristram Shandy, etc., I decided to write my dissertation on this novel, which I found the most entertaining of the whole lot, and, though apparently ‘light’ if compared to the heavy-weight ones I just mentioned, with great potential to allow one to explore problems as complex as the question of appearances, representation and mimesis in the Eighteenth-Century novel.

One of the first successful epistolary novels Evelina by Fanny Burney is a more than usually wonderful example of 18th century virtue novels. The main character, the virtuous and artless Evelina who is at the mercy of her more worldly, more sophisticated friends finds herself thrown into the thick of London society and beset by trouble at every turn. The poor girl finds herself the victim of unwanted romantic pursuit/advances, and various attempts by nefarious characters to sully her honour, stain her reputation, and bring scandal to her and her friends and family. It's a story about class and the evils of a decadent life, but also of the value of virtue. This novel is a delight to read. It's pleasant but not saccharine and it's very very well written. I loved it and I think you will too.