How to Read Like a Gentleman: Burney's Instructions to Her Critics

Frances (Burney) d'Arblay (1752-1840)

Frances Burney by Edward Francesco Burney (c. 1784-85)

Burney on the Net

Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla, The Wanderer, Burney's Journals and Letters, and Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story

I begin this section of my website with copies of essays I have written on Frances D'Arblay, and a review of a book offer a fresh perspective on Burney, all of which were published in the Burney Letter. This is also a link to a practiced scholarly bibliography.

• "Fanny Is Usa"
• "On Offset Encountering Fanny Burney d'Arblay"
• "On Reading Divergent Fanny Burney d'Arblays".
• Burney, Riccoboni, and Laclos: Textual Promiscuities past Antoinette Marie Sol.
• Radcliffe, Williams, Smith, Wollstonecraft, and More: Women Writers and the English Nation in the 1790s: Romantic Holding by Angela Keane.
• A review of The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney. Vol 5. 1782-1783, edd. Lars E. Troide and Stewart J. Cooke.
• A Select Bibliography

Now I have a story to tell about life on the Internet and in particular one which records the kinds of experiences that can occur on an unmoderated listing dedicated to a cult effigy when someone tries to lead a serious reading in public space of a supposedly pop or a novel which is well-known by those who read or who have gone to college and taken "English" courses. This story may exist of use to those who study group dynamics in net. It reveals some of the reasons it is very hard to hold intelligent informed chat in internet without potent moderation or threshold control.

In January 1998 while a group of people on Austen-l were reading Austen'south Northanger Abbey together, I proposed to lead a group read on Austen-l of one of the novels Austen defends in her Northanger Abbey: Belinda past Maria Edgeworth, or Cecilia or Camilla by Fanny Burney.

Later considerable discussion, I proposed to concur ii elections across the list. Outset we would encounter how many people wanted to read any book by a contemporary of Austen'south and so which one. More than than 200 people voted to read either ane of the books mentioned by Austen in Northanger Abbey or a book by Austen's contemporary, preferably one Austen had read or alluded to in one of her novels. Nosotros and then went on to nominate books. By the fourth dimension I held this second election, the list of books to be voted upon included another novel central to Northanger Abbey, Ann Radcliffe's Mysteries of Udolpho; and a novel not mentioned in Northanger Abbey, Burney's best-known novel, Evelina. In effect this second round of voting showed ii groups of readers at odds: those who wanted to read what they hoped would be a pleasant entertaining book and at a quick pace and those who wanted to read a book every bit part of a serious literary written report and slowly. As and so often happens on lists when list-wide elections are held, the election process itself turned into a popularity contest. What happens is the novels whose titles are most familiar and thought to be the "easiest" win at first. Thus Evelina , which is nowadays assigned in higher courses for undergraduates, won.

Since Evelina had received the most votes, nosotros went on to read it. I told myself that fifty-fifty though information technology was not ane of those praised past Austen in her Northanger Abbey, it was after all about "a immature lady'south entrance into the globe." After if enough silent and active people wanted to go along, the active participants in the list could read, study, and write virtually Cecilia. From previous experiences on other listing, I knew that the active people who posted virtually reads were those who wanted to written report them and read interesting posts well-nigh them. I hoped that Evelina might stir enthusiasm, and that, since group reads are "staged" performances, the people who posted and had thus invested time and attempt in what they had washed, would want to themselves to carry on or induce others to. Thus the group read might itself spin into Cecilia and peradventure fifty-fifty Camilla-- and who knew, maybe even Edgeworth's Belinda -- though I e'er doubted group enthusiasm could last that long.

Well, until well-nigh the cease of this staged conversation I tin say that a very large group of people read Evelina together on Austen-l because a very large grouping of people posted about it regularly. This was a remarkable phenomena. We also discovered interesting things about the book and the mode modern readers responded to it today. For example, Evelina is ready into a grid of a calendar, and adheres pretty closely to 1774, and women readers today identify readily with the young Evelina when she is confronted by aggressive young men. For an etext of Evelina, click here. Here is ane thread typical of those written at the time; the rest may be institute in the archives of Austen-l between Jan and May 1998 by typing in "Burney: Evelina," which was the header those joining in on the conversation used.

Evelina; or, A Young Lady's Archway into the World

• Towards A Agenda for Evelina

Alas, during the time of the group read on Evelina, a grouping of people on Austen- l opposed to intellectual talk and seriousness and simply willing to "countenance" group reads of Austen's "large vi" novels (that is, against having group reads across listing on other than the half-dozen well-known novels), heckled, flamed, and mocked those reading Evelina. Those who have experienced the nature of group dynamics in net will be able to imagine how painful this could be equally others on the list jumped onto misunderstood postings, distorted subtexts and the like, and gradually the reading group had become the "Burney subgroup," and went down to well-nigh xx agile participants.

There was, however, an extraordinary amount of "backchanneling" on Austen-50 during these years: among other things, people posted to one some other about Evelina and Mansfield Park, one of Austen's novels most oftentimes exploited for forage for outrageous flame wars. (This list was basically unmoderated.) So I starting time ascertained that at the cease of the read of Evelina, we still had some 40 people who were getting into advice with i another over Evelina or proverb that they had enjoyed the group read and wanted to see the Cecilia read go forwards. Although several of the original people at present said they would not want to postal service onlist, they did desire to read Cecilia in a group setting. I felt I could not go it alone so asked Jill Spriggs to facilitate with me; when she agreed to, I decided to carry on with what I had begun.

The outcome was she and I began to post weekly on Cecilia, and, together with a several other stalwart people, nosotros posted over a number of months on this enormous novel. Backchannelling increased. Onlist we outlined the novel, and talked about Cecilia in means which may be of interest to people who study Burney, and are interested in women's literature or the eighteenth century novel, especially as Cecilia remains a novel which is not much read and well-nigh which there is much less in print than Evelina. Here are most of the postings every bit they occurred in the same story format I used for the group reads which occurred on Trollope-l (now on Yahoo).

Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress

Volume I

• May 31st, 1998: Introduction: Warming Upward to Cecilia
• June seventh, 1998: Volume I, Volume I, Chs i - 6: The Inimitable Miss Larolles; Cecilia and The Witlings; Morrice as Dr Burney; Fanny Burney's years at Courtroom; "Immense must be the cede of Time & Feeling..."; Mr and Mrs Harrel; A Sketch of High Life; Doing Fourth dimension At Home; "One never thinks of talking to a woman ...": Analogies between Burney'southward Cecilia and Austen'south novels; Evaluating Evelina v. CeciliaAn Assembly; A Breakfast
• June 14th: Volume I, Book I, Chapters 7 - 11: A Project: Best Laid Plans and Plots; The Significance of Money; Epistolary/Dramatic Analogies; An Opera Rehearsal: Artaserse, 1779; The Plight Of The Working Grade
• June 21st: Volume I, Book II, Capacity 1 - 3: Opera rehearsals of the rich and famous; A Masquerade; Who is really being masked?; Burney and Austen's Juvenilia: "Jack and Alice" & Cecilia: Masquerades; Cecilia and Evelina: Books Written from Woman's Point of View; Cecilia spends coin on books and Mrs Loma; A Man of Wealth, of Family, & A Human to Exploit; The Rawlins; Cecilia and Austen's S&S & Emma: Masquerades; Which Men in Burney's Life are Behind the Masks in Cecilia; The White Domino and Darcy; Monckton and Montoni; More Parallels betwixt Burney's and other novelist's heroes
• June 28th: Volume I, Volume II, Chapters 4 - 8: An Affray; A Duel; At the Opera; The Delvilles & Pride of Lineage -- and Monckton; A Fashionable Friend; A Family Party; Historical Density and Literary Freshness; Swords; An Examination; A T�te-�-T�te; Delvile Sr : Collins and Lady Catherine combined?; Indirect accost in Cecilia

Volume Two

• July 5th: Volume Two, Book Iii, Capacity 1 - 5: An Application; Group Hangings in Progress; Mortimer Delvile; Why It's Skillful Despite the Style; An Admonition; Cecilia & Mrs Delvile/Cecilia & Mrs Harrel; An Evasion; An Adventure; Debtors' Prison
• July 12th: Volume Ii, Book Iii, Chapters half dozen - 9: A Man Of Genius; Cecilia Makes a Friend at Terminal; An Expedient; Calling the Surgeon In; A Remonstrance; A Victory; A Alphabetic character and an Aphorism
• July 19th: Volume II, Volume 4, Chapters 1 - 5: money, money, coin... ; A Sympathy; A Disharmonize; An Expectation; An Agitation; Suicides: Mr Harrel and Mr Macartney ....
• July 26th: Volume 2, Book IV, Chapters six - 10: A Man of the Ton; Mr Meadows and Austen'due south Mr Ferrars; Miss Larolles and Persuasion; A Reproof; �7,000!!!!; A Mistake; An Explanation; A Murmuring: Mrs Delvile, Mrs Belfield, and Cecilia; Cecilia and Austen'due south Emma; Amanda Foreman'southward Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire and the 1779 epistolary novel, The Sylph, which has been attributed to the Duchess: Hither is the globe of the ton candidly presented to the states.

Volume III

• Baronial 2th: Volume III, Book Five, Chapters 1 - ix: A Rout; "Her ancestors were rich farmers"; Austen'south Reworkings of Cecilia; Cecilia and Impossibly High Standards; Need for Naturalistic Dialogue Relatively Recent; A Sarcasm; Trying to Work the Clues Out; A Surmise; Not Dramatizing; Burney's shortcomings as a novelist; The Ending?; A Bold Stroke; Just Missing the Jackpot; How Long Did Burney Spend on Each Book?; The Plot & ii sets of friends from Cecilia and Emma; A Miser's Mansion; Cecilia equally picaresque heroine?; Mortimer Delvile and other threads; Mortimer Delvile and Lord Orville; Evelina/Orville and the Cecilia/Delvile romances; A Announcement; Mrs Delvile and Lady Russell
• August 9th: Volume III, Book 5, Chapters 10 - thirteen: A Gamester'south Censor; Spectacular Bankruptcy and Suicide; A Homo Of Business (Function One); Phantasmagoric: Suicide, the Spectacle; "Ill Usage" from her married man; Burney as Relevant; Domestic Violence as a Fact of Real Life; A Man Of Concern (Parts Two and Three); The Crazy Mismatched Group in the Box Around the Madman; Priscilla very irritating; The Death Off-Stage & Through Cecilia'southward Consciousness; A Solution; Thing Enough for Many Novels and Backwash; Austen and Burney: Dickensian Moments
• August 16th: Book 3, Volume Six, Chapters 1 - 6: Priscilla (over again); A Debate; More than One Debate; A Railing; A Gothic Place and Lonely Woman; A Rattle; A Mystery; What Mood Is This Book In? (A Mystery)
• August 23rd: Volume Iii, Book Half-dozen, Capacity 7 - 11: An Chestnut; A Conference; The Starving Gypsy and Her Baby; Burney and Austen's new kind of heroes: heroes of sensibility; The Style; An Attack; Mortimer'southward and Darcy'southward Unforgivable Proposals; A Retreat; A Worry; Cecilia and P&P; Cecilia: Northanger Abbey & Due south&S; A Gothic Place & Lonely Adult female; Echoes of Burney in Austen

Volume IV

• August 30th: Volume Iv, Book VII, Chapters 1 - v: Non Enough Naked Truth; A Renovation; Time Out to Recharge I's Bombardment; A Visit; Burney & Austen: Fidel and Lady Catherine de Bourgh!; An Incident; Cecilia: P&P and Southward&South; A Suggestion; The Surreptitious Marriage; A Letter; Mortimer's Long Letter
• September 6th: Book IV, Book VII, Chapters half dozen - 9: A Retrospection; An Embarrassment; Why isn't Cecilia epistolary?; Thou.D.?, Mortimer, & the Puzzle of the Narrative Styles; A Torment; Poor Petty Dog; Delvile appears; Burney'south Books equally Fictional and Self-Censored Worlds; "Characters" in the 17th and 18th C Sense, in Burney, Dickens & Austen
• September 13th: Volume 4, Volume Eight, Chapters 1 - 5: An Intermission; How To Control Someone; On the Road; That Poor Canis familiaris; A Consternation; Cecilia & Jane Eyre: 2 Interrupted Weddings: M D'Arblay; Burney & Austen, Cecilia& P&P: Mrs Delvile five Cecilia & Lady Catherine de Bourgh v Elizabeth; Mind-Forged Manacles; A Cottage; The Story of Belfield; Burney & Austen: Wedding v Marriage; Novels for & past Women; A Johnsonian Figure in the Landscape; Written Too Fast
• September 20th: Volume Iv, Book Viii, Chapters 6 - 10: A Contest; Mortimer as Elizabeth Bennet: Lady Delvile equally a Lady Russell type with Cecilia every bit an Anne Elliot; Hugh Thomson's later 19th century illustrations of Austen & Evelina; Hugh Thomson's later 19th century illustrations of Austen & EvelinaAn Unnamed Woman Whose History is Non Concluded

Volume V

• September 27th: Volume V, Volume IX, Chapters 1 - 5: A Cogitation; On Longing to Be Let Alone; A Portrait of a Marriage; A Surprize; A Confabulation; A Wrangling; The Money and London; Mr Delvile plays Lady Catherine de Bourgh; Burney and Mrs Thrale; A Suspicion; Mrs Lefroy & Delvile, Cecilia equally Marianne & v Emma; Cecilia and Monckton. Hester Thrale Piozzi by George Dance (1793)
  
• October 4th: Volume V, Book Nine, Chapters 6 - 11: A Disturbance; Many Parallels with Emma; The Treatment of Time; A At-home; Rasselas and Austen Parallels; An Alarm; A Suspense; Cecilia's money; Why Is There No Sex in Cecilia?; A Relation; A Marriage which is not consummated; An Enterprise; The Wedding ceremony Finally Committed
• October 11th: Book V, Book Ten, Chapters 1 - 6: A Discovery; Making Private Characters the Villains; An Interview; Monckton and Mortimer's Duel; A Summons; An Run into/A Tribute/A Termination; "How very different, from our own dearest Mansfield Park"; A Deliberation; A Decision; Across Coping; A Prating
• October 18th: Volume V, Volume Ten, Chapters vii - x: Cecilia Loses It ("The Pursuit"); And the Book Comes Alive Again; In Which Our Heroine Panics and Her Mind Dissolves; Burney and Money; Women Dependent on Men Who Cannot Be Counted Upon; An Encounter; The Dramatic Background; Fever, Chills, Genuinely Ill, A Mangle; Cecilia and sexual activity once more; A Tribute; The Penultimate Chapter !!!!; Summing upward Cecilia Lady Honoria that matrimony is a relief; A Termination; At the Terminal Minute Yet Another Inset Story; Nearly There; Mr Bennet Puts a Finish to the Mangle; The Commonplace Phrase "Pride and Prejudice"; The Funny Coda at the Stop of the Story; Journey's End; Repose Desperation and Bright Delusion; Burney's ideas about women and their place in club; Cecilia.

Since despite the many attempts to disrupt the reading of Cecilia, the read had been a success, I ran some other ballot, and the same group of people who had read and those who had posted on Burney'due south Cecilia, read and wrote about Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story and Mary Wollstonecraft's The Rights of Adult female. By this time most people participating had long forgotten or did not know about the original connection of the subgroup with Austen's Northanger Abbey. The grouping also had a new proper name: " Austen'due south Contemporaries Subgroup."

However, these two reads survived in the face of the same problems that the reads of Burney's Evelina and Cecilia had had; and by the end of them, although Jill and I were preparing to read Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent, and hoped for Belinda, we and others were worn downwards and tired of the harassment. We backchanneled with various people nigh the reality that the active members of the subgroups had decreased to such a small number of individuals (about 4) that posting made those who posted, and especially me, a target and frequently turned Austen-l into a bizarre hellhole of ugly personal attacks in cyberspace. I have omitted incidents where people came on pretending to be poignant victims of some sort or other, and people on the list were fooled into publicly offering to aid and were and then promptly humiliated through jeering exposures; incidents where others would write parodic emails of apparent imbeciles joining in the chat, emails written in such a way as to about be plausible and which included the kind of language which would signal to a naive person he or she belonged to his or her group. There were so much trolling and poisonous barrack that I can't begin to catalogue the specific varieties, much less record details.

Finally, in that location had been a motility offlist where 9 people posted to one another over a series of weeks to formulate rules they hoped the listowner would put in identify: if he was non willing to moderate himself, they offered to do so in his place. Their proposal was rejected past the simple expedient of silence. Around that time Jill and I unsubscribed and Janeites was begun past ii of the nine people.

Afterwards that summer of 1999, we institute ourselves on Janeites (a Yahoo list), which was now an alternating to Austen-l for those who wanted courteous intelligent discussion. Janeites still exists as a strongly moderated listing and is now quite large (over 400 people). Jill and I proposed to facilitate a reading of Burney's Camilla, but when nosotros plant that we could non do it without unpredictable restrictions over length of posts, who would write facilitating posts and other kinds of (however well-meant) constricting and frustrating intervention, nosotros withdrew from the read -- though not from the list. All the same, the read went on and there were some interesting conversation and postings on Camilla. These may as well be found in the archives of Austen-fifty (where Camilla was too discussed) as well as the archives of Janeites. We never got very far on The Wanderer on either Austen-fifty or Janeites, but there was some skillful talk about it as a gothic novel of the French revolution on Trollope-fifty, and when we read Burney's diaries and letters on EighteenthCentury Worlds (on Yahoo, a list I now own), we placed The Wanderer in an autobiographical and romantic context. There is an etext of Camilla at the Penn State Commemoration of Women Writers. I include a very few cursory postings on Camilla that I managed to write on Janeites and various rich threads on The Wanderer from Trollope-l and EighteenthCentury:

Camilla: or, A Motion-picture show of Youth and The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties

• Camilla: The Concept of Confidentiality, The Perverseness of the Spirit, The Wilder Wonders of the Heart; Fashionable Spas; A Heroine In Search of a Mother; Camilla and Sanditon and other Austen novels; The Heroine equally Cripple; Surrogates for Burney's Father.
• The Wanderer: Burney and the Gothic; The Opening Scene: An Plain Black Heroine; Stonehenge; Ten Years in France: Looking Forward to The Wanderer; Fanny and Her Booksellers; The Wanderer: The Later Bad Reviews; Burney D'Arblay's Journals: 1815 & Last Years with D'Arblay & The Wanderer: An Eighteenth Century Sensibility At Times Withal; Why the Original Good Reviews and Early on Success; Burney Department 214-July 1815 Revisited with Harman'south biography; The Wanderer: Fanny and her 2 Alexes; Simon Jarvis on Claire Harman; The Romance of Ilfracombe, or Ariadne on her Rock; Burney's Romantic Way; Her "Adoration" of "Her" Men; Claire Harman's Fanny Burney: A Life: The Wanderer A Novel Written Originally or Begun in French; Enjoyable and Iconoclastic About the Diaries and Recent Criticism.

During these years and since the summertime of 2000 (by which time both Jill and I had go inactive on Janeites), I wrote postings on Burney D'Arblay'due south life-writings on C18-l. Beginning in Jan 2002 on EighteenthCentury Worlds I led and participated in a read of Burney's Journals and Letters which went truly splendidly. It was stimulating and groovy fun. Nosotros did not have as many people reading and contributing on EighteenthCentury as we once did for Evelina on Austen-fifty, only we had about xxx people who contributed also as read, and a number of these people also read 1 or other of the biographies and turned either to Charlotte Barrett's original 1842-46 edition of her great-aunt's journals and messages or to the modern scholarly entire editions of the journals and letters as edited by or under the general "supervision" of Joyce Hemlow (Volumes 1 - 12 of Fanny Burney: Journals and Letters roofing the years 1791 - 1840) and Lars Troide (a projected 12 volumes of The Early on Journals and Messages of Fanny Burney covering the years 1768 - 1791). An essay-description of this online conversation was published the Burney Letter.

Ane last comment: The largest perspective one can place on what happened at Austen-l and Janeites is one which includes the beliefs of fans over their cult figure. The intensity of emotional adherence and identification of people who see themselves every bit fans of a celebrity figure to an often distorted picture of that figure and his or her work prevents unbiased reasoned discussion from going forward. It also shapes how other readers are led to see and experience the figure. Jane Austen has been a cult figure since her nephew first published his emotional memoir virtually her life; Fanny Burney seems to be turning into 1. Since the existence big fan communities generates money and favorable partisan coterie publicity, it is in the interest of anyone who works or becomes involved with any projects involving Austen and (lately increasingly) Burney to begin with an exaggerated respect; whatever sharp criticism must exist presented in somewhat disguised forms. The phenomenon of the cult figure or group of texts is an important one in our era, and we need frank discussion of how dissimilar cults arise, what imagined characteristics cult figuresare typically endowed with past their fans, what kinds of people become fervent fans of literary writers and their characters, and what is the effect of such cults on serious report of works of the imagination.

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