A naïve, young beauty, she was wooed by a libertine, Sir John Belmont, and married him in all haste. He was a dear friend of her maternal grandfather, as well as her dearly departed mother.Įvelina is a spitting image of her mother, Caroline, who died shortly after giving birth. Miss Evelina AnvilleĮvelina is a seventeen-year-old orphan, raised by a kindly village vicar, Mr. She ends up pushed into claiming her rightful place in the world. And at the heart of it, there is a sort of mystery involving our eponymous heroine. There are highwaymen and depressive states. There are ladies of ill repute and forays down darkened alleyways. And romance, naturally.Įvelina is a bit more out of the drawing-room than an Austen novel. There are gentle and not-so-gentle societal critiques aplenty. The novel follows – through a series of very thorough letters, written mostly by Evelina herself to her guardian – the gaffes and travails and eventual triumphs of a young, beautiful woman in Georgian England. RELATED: 50 BOOKS TO READ IF YOU LOVE JANE AUSTEN This epistolary novel was popular in its day and was surely inspirational to the writings of the much more heralded and feted Jane Austen, who published her first novel over two decades after Evelina’s publication.

Classic Book Review: Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the World of Society (1778) by Frances BurneyĮvelina by Frances Burney is, as its subtitle states, the history of a young lady’s entrance into the world of Georgian society.

Evelina burney