Beyond Evelina: The Individual Novel and the Community of Literature
Margaret Anne Doody, Vanderbilt University
Volume 3, no. 4, July 1991
©McMaster University, 2015. All articles published on the Eighteenth-Century Fiction website are protected by copyright held by Eighteenth-Century Fiction, a journal published by the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University.
ABSTRACT
It seems a sign of our times that an issue of Eighteenth-Century Fiction devoted to Frances Burney should have arisen spontaneously — that is, not as a result of editorial long-term planning, but as an effect of essays submitted. Obviously, there is real and growing interest in Burney’s work. It is not now considered absurd to give detailed attention to such a lighthearted and flimsy novel as Evelina –– for so it used to be considered. At one time — and a very recent time, too — it would have been ridiculous to offer a collection of Evelina essays: most would have been returned to their senders, on the grounds that “we already have one.” That the reputation of Burney’s work has changed must inevitably be a matter for rejoicing for me personally. I feel that I can claim some credit for the change in attitude — as can Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub. The condescending tone has almost entirely vanished, a tone very audible even in the 1970s — e.g., in Patricia Meyer Spacks’s Imagining a Self (1976). It is gratifying also to see signs that Evelina‘s popularity has increased, since I am at the moment editing Evelina for Penguin Books. Yet, despite my own deep engagement with Burney, I am surprised — not that there should be a Burney issue of ECF, but that such an issue should be entirely given over to Evelina. What is it about Evelina that calls forth all this attention now?
Other ECF articles on the topic of “Frances Burney” include:
“Black, Patched and Pennyless”: Race and Crime in Burney’s The Wanderer
by TARA CZECHOWSKI (ECF 25.4, Summer 2013)
Dangerous Fortune-telling in Frances Burney’s Camilla
by JENNIFER LOCKE (ECF 25.4, Summer 2013)
Rewriting Radicalism: Wollstonecraft in Burney’s The Wanderer
by TARA GHOSHAL WALLACE (ECF 24.3, Spring 2012)
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