Evelina - Burney, Frances

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Résumé :
Evelina or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World is a novel written by English author Frances Burney and first published in 1778. Evelina, the title character, is the unacknowledged but legitimate daughter of a dissipated English aristocrat. Her dubious birth has seen her raised in rural seclusion until her seventeenth year. Through a series of humorous events that take place in London and the resort town of Hotwells, near Bristol, Evelina learns how to navigate the complex layers of 18th-century society and earn the love of a distinguished nobleman. This sentimental novel, which has notions of sensibility and early romanticism, satirizes the society in which it is set and is a significant precursor to later works by Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, whose novels explore many of the same issues. (wikipedia.org)

Biographie:
Frances Burney (13 June 1752 - 6 January 1840) was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. Of her four novels, the first, Evelina, was the most successful, and remains the most highly regarded. When Burney published her first book, novel reading was frowned upon as something young women of a certain social status should not do, while novel writing was out of the question. When she published Evelina anonymously, she only told her siblings and two trusted aunts. Eventually her father read the novel and guessed that Burney was its author. News of her identity spread and brought Burney almost immediate fame with its unique narrative and comic strengths.