Frances Burney
Frances Burney
Frances Burney (1752–1840), also known as ‘Fanny’, wrote from the age of ten, and
had transcribed her father’s General History of Music, yet she published Evelina, or a
Young Lady’s Entrance into the World anonymously. It succeeded and she was asked
to Mrs Thrale’s, where she was horrified to find it on display. ‘I hid it under other
Books, for I should Die, – or Faint at least – if any body was to pick it up innocently
while I am here.’ The well-brought-up Fanny knew that society frowned at fiction.
The innocent Evelina comes out in society in London and Bath, is pursued by
dashing artful Willoughby but marries modest considerate Lord Orville. Virtue is
rewarded, plot baffles, dialogue sparkles. The epistolary mode allows the machina-
tions of men and the world to be experienced through Evelina’s eyes.Evelina exploits
an 18th-century interest in perspective and partial knowledge. It is a bridge from
Grandison to Pride and Prejudice.
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Almost all 18th-century literature is very theatrical, in its awareness of audience
and use of appearance to manipulate audience attitude. The caricatures of William
Hogarth (1679–1764) and the oratorios of G. F. Handel (1685–1759) were public
theatre. But there had been no first-rate Hanoverian plays before Goldsmith.
Garrick dominated a theatre of Shakespeare adaptations, farces and pantomimes –
and Addison’s Cato. The son of an Irish actor, Richard Brinsley Sheridan
(1751–1816) went from Harrow School to Bath, where he eloped with a singer,
fighting duels and reconciling fathers – a good start to a life in theatre management.
In 1777, Johnson proposed him as a member of the Club, remarking, according to
Boswell, that he had ‘written the two best comedies of his age’:The Rivals (1775),
with its glorious Mrs Malaprop, a great success at Covent Garden, and The School
for Scandal (1777). On Garrick’s death in 1779, Sheridan took over the Drury Lane
theatre and wrote The Critic. He was 28. But in 1780 he entered the Commons,
where he followed the example of Burke rather than that of Gibbon, who never
THE AGE OF JOHNSON 221Portrait of Frances (‘Fanny’) Burney as an elegant
young lady, by her cousin, Edward Francesco
Burney, c.1785.