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INTRODUCTION
THIS year" (1778) says the Diary of Madame
D'Arblay, better known to the world of novel-
readers by her familiar maiden name, " was
ushered in by a grand and most important event.
At the latter end of January the literary world
was favoured with the first publication of the
ingenious, learned, and most profound Fanny
Burney."" The book that is introduced with this
fourish is Evelina, and the diary hardly exag-
gerates the impression it nade. Dr. Johnson, a
friend of Dr. Burney's, was an easy convert,
thanks partly to the amiable offices of Mrs. Thrale,
and said he preferred it to Fielding's novels, which
was perfectly true, the truer since he never
really cared for Fielding. The list of Evelina's
and Fanny Burney's other famous admirers in-
cluded Burke, Gibbon, Reynolds, and Sheridan.
Lowndes's shop in Fleet Street, where the novel
was published, suddenly became a place of note
to the fashionable world:" fine carriages and
ich liveries, not often seen east of Temple Bar,"
were to be seen there daily.
the age and youthful graces of the novelist began
to spread and lend piquancy to the novel; she
was said to be a girl of seventeen; not till 1long
afterwards was this pretty fantasy killed.
own diary shows that Fanny Burney herself was
innocent of any attempt to foster the notion.
However, Evelina, though its writer was some
six-and-twenty when it was published, had been