Just a quick note: I finished rereading this earlier in the evening. I really love this book. Of course, this time around, I skipped most of Villairs’ letters to Evelina because frankly, as I already knew the basics, they didn’t really contain any of the story I wanted to reread.
When I was sixteen and first read this, Lord Orville was a perfect hero. Now as I read it, on the other side of his mere twenty-six years, I still like him as a hero but for a few other reasons.
If this book were written today, as a standard romance novel, Sir Clement Willoughby would be the hero as he is vastly amusing, passionate, fiendish and rakish. And when he first comes across her in the dark walks he wouldn’t rest until he had proven to himself that she was as slutty as the low character she now seemed to be. And of course she’d be ruined, etc…
So, for those who haven’t read it yet: Evelina by Fanny Burney. I really don’t think anything I’ve written here would spoil the book.
Always very interesting to read Austen and Burney back to back.