Oxford World's Classics: The Wanderer: or, Female Difficulties - Softcover

Burney, Frances (Fanny)

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0192837583 ISBN 13: 9780192837585

Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks, 2001

Synopsis

The Wanderer or Female Difficulties is the tale of a penniless émigrée from Revolutionary France trying to earn her living in England while guarding her own secrets. Combining the best elements of the Gothic and historical novels, this newly appreciated work is an extraordinary piece of Romantic fiction. Burney's tough comedy offers a satiric view of complacent middle-class insularity that echoes Godwin and Wollstonecraft's attacks on the English social structure. The problems of the new feminism and of the old anti-feminism are explored in the relationship between the heroine and her English patroness and rival, the Wollstonecraftian Elinor Joddrel, and the racism inherent within both the French and British empires is exposed when the émigrée disguises herself as a black woman. This edition is fully annotated with appendices on the French Revolution, race relations, amusements, and geography and a previously unpublished manuscript revealing the connection between The Wanderer and Camilla.

About this title

Review:

"Thank you for bringing this important novel back in print. The Wanderer explores the situation of women and feminism at the end of the 18th century more thoroughly than any other work from the period. I'm delighted to be able to include this book in my course on Enlightenment Feminist Literature."--Audrey Bilger, Oberlin College "Thank you for bringing this important novel back in print. The Wanderer explores the situation of women and feminism at the end of the 18th century more thoroughly than any other work from the period. I'm delighted to be able to include this book in my course on Enlightenment Feminist Literature."--Audrey Bilger, Oberlin College "Thank you for bringing this important novel back in print. The Wanderer explores the situation of women and feminism at the end of the 18th century more thoroughly than any other work from the period. I'm delighted to be able to include this book in my course on Enlightenment Feminist Literature."--Audrey Bilger, Oberlin College "Thank you for bringing this important novel back in print. The Wanderer explores the situation of women and feminism at the end of the 18th century more thoroughly than any other work from the period. I'm delighted to be able to include this book in my course on Enlightenment Feminist Literature."--Audrey Bilger, Oberlin College

About the Author:

Frances Burney (Fanny Burney) was a British novelist who wrote four novels, eight plays, and one biography in her lifetime, and left behind 20 volumes of journals and letters after her death. Self-educated, Burney began writing at the age of 10, and published her first novel, Evelina, anonymously in 1778. Burney followed Evelina's success with Cecilia, Camilla, and The Wanderer, all of which explored the lives of English aristocrats and the role of women in society. Burney s novels were enormously popular during her lifetime, inspiring both Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray, and her journals are recognized for their uncommonly accurate and candid portrayal of 18th-century England. Burney died in Bath, England, in 1840.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0192837583
• ISBN 13: 9780192837585
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 1004
• Editor: Doody Margaret Anne, Mack Robert L., Sabor Peter