"Evelina" by Frances Burney *****

• Summer Sub Club read with Beth
• Originally published in 1778
• English author
• Author's Preface:
• p.10..."The heroine of these memoirs, young, artless, and inexperienced, is   'No faultless Monster, that the World ne'er saw,' but the offspring of Nature, and of Nature in her simplest attire."
• p.10..."To avoid what is common, without adopting what is unnatural, must limit the ambition of the vulgar herd of authors.....I yet presume not to attempt pursuing the same ground which they have tracked; whence though they ma have cleared the weeds, they have also culled the flowers, and though they have rendered the path plain, they have left it barren." 
• Vocabulary:
• flummering:  to flatter
• megrims:  whim, fancy, fad
• Court Calendar bigot:  lives by listing of people's royal ranking
• toad-eater:  derogatory term for person earning their living as a companion....(hence the word toadying?)
• Quotes:
• p.23..."...much is to be expected from emulation, where nothing is to be feared from envy."
• p.23..."...folly has ever sought alliance with beauty."
• p.83..."Generosity without delicacy, like wit without judgement, generally give as much pain as pleasure."
• p.166..."Remember, my dear Evelina, nothing is so delicate as the reputation of a woman: it is, at once, the most beautiful and most brittle of human things."
• p.275..."I don't know what the devil a woman lives for after thirty: she is only in other folks' way."
• Review:   Delightful, satirical, melodramatic, comical....all of these adjectives accurately describe Frances Burney's feminine 18th century coming of age tale.  Our protagonist, the naive, pure Evelina enters the brash, hypocritical, backstabbing, and often dangerous society world after a very sheltered childhood.  The plot unfolds via correspondence between characters and moves rapidly between settings, plot twists, appalling behavior and satirical commentary of the social mores of the time.  Wonderful read.  It's one of those during which 400 pages fly by!