I chanced upon this in the library, but the minute I saw that this book influenced none other than Jane Austen, I knew that I was going to read it. According to Jane Austen for Dummies (which is actually really informative), the three novels of France Burney “brought the comedy of manners – in which Austen would excel – from the stages of the theatres to the pages of the novel. Moreover, she mad novel writing for women respectable.”

Evelina is the titular heroine of the novel. She had a rather tragic beginning, with her father pretending that her mother’s marriage to him was void and her mother dying young, but she was loved by the people that she brought up. When the novel starts, she’s seventeen years old and going to London for the first time. Being brought up in the countryside, she makes a few blunders but is rescued by the considerate Lord Orville (while being pursued by the suspicious Sir Clement). However, everything really goes South when her long-lost grandmother finds her and insists that Evelina stay with her and her vulgar family; this stay being a compromise from the original plan of bringing Evelina to Paris.

The novel is an epistolary novel and it was very charming. If you’re used to the language of Jane Austen and her contemporaries, you should be comfortable with Burney’s style. Most of the letters are from Evelina to others, so the point of view is pretty consistent. It was also a pretty neat plot device – by using letters from two other characters at the start of the novel, the Burney managed to give the reader an overview of Evelina’s history and situation without making feel too much like an info-dump.

I did find the novel to be melodramatic at times (it seems that every time Evelina is overcome with gratitude, she falls to her knees and hugs the knees of someone else – luckily this doesn’t happen all the time) but it’s all in good humour. I didn’t get the feeling that Burney took her characters very seriously, and the bad manners of several characters read as satire at times. Evelina is definitely more dramatic than any of Jane Austen’s novels, with many mbarrassing situations that Evelina finds herself in over the course of the novel.

Overall, I found Evelina to be a fun read. As a character, Evelina has a heart of gold and her innocence regarding society matters is charming. Plus, I can totally empathise with how she didn’t fit in with London society or her grandmother’s family (although I’m not secretly a rich heiress like her). The novel was light and contained a fair amount of humour, poking fun at the various characters in London society. If you’re a fan of Jane Austen, you may want to try branching out and giving Evelina a read.