The Wanderer

by Burney, Frances; Doody, Margaret Anne; Mack, Robert L.; Sabor, Peter; Doody, Margaret Anne

• ISBN13: 9780192837585
• ISBN10: 0192837583
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-06-28
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Wanderer or Female Difficulties is the tale of a penniless emigree 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 ofRomantic 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 andher English patroness and rival, the Wollstonecraftian Elinor Joddrel, and the racism inherent within both the French and British empires is exposed when the emigree 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is fully annotated with appendices on the French Revolution, race relations, amusements, and geography and a previously unpublished manuscript revealing the connection between The Wanderer and Camilla.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	vi
Introduction	vii
Note on the Text	xxxviii
Select Bibliography	xl
A Chronology of Frances Burney	xliii
THE WANDERER; OR, FEMALE DIFFICULTIES
To Doctor Burney	3	(8)
Volume I	11	(184)
Volume II	195	(188)
Volume III	383	(180)
Volume IV	563	(148)
Volume V	711	(164)
Appendix I: The French Revolution in The Wanderer	875	(9)
Appendix II: Burney and Race Relations	884	(4)
Appendix III: Geography	888	(5)
Appendix IV: Finance	893	(4)
Appendix V: Fashionable Amusements	897	(4)
Appendix VI: The Provok'd Husband	901	(5)
Explanatory Notes	906