Frances Burney (1752-1840) novel

In her long life that spanned five reigns, Frances Burney created a new genre in the English novel, chronicled events ranging from George III's mad crisis to the aftermath of Waterloo, and wrote comedies that could have rivalled Sheridan's had they been produced. Her first novel, Evelina, was published anonymously in 1778. With Evelina, she created a new school of fiction in English, one in which women in society were portrayed in realistic, contemporary circumstances. She brought new dynamism to portrayals of personal relationships and familiar home life. The "comedy of manners" genre in which she worked paved the way for Jane Austen, Maria Edgeworth, and other 19th-century writers. Evelina's mix of social Edmund Burke up all night reading and leading London society to comedy, realism, and wit made it an instant success, keeping speculate on the identity of the writer, who was universally assumed to be a man. Evelina's great success (even Queen Charlotte and the roval princesses were allowed to read the book) reconciled her father to his daughter's authorship. She was taken up by literary and high society and became the first woman to make writing novels respectable. Her second novel, Cecilia, published in 1782, earned her more fame. Even Napoleon husband, General Alexandre d'Arblay, about it. Jane Austen took the leon would read it and compliment her title of Pride and Prejudice from the closing chapter of Cecilia, and the plot of Pride and Prejudice has some noticeable similarities with that of Cecilia.

Her third novel, Camilla, was published in 1796. Her fourth and final novel, The Wanderer, published in 1814. The book, although not well-received by reviewers at the time, has recently received new attention for its realistic, pre-Victoria portrayal of conditions for working women. It wasn't until Dr. Joyce Hemlow published her landmark biography, The History of Fanny Burney, in 1958 that the full impact of her contribution to literature and letters began to be better appreciated. Critical appreciation of Frances Burney's novels continues to grow, sparked by new interest in 18th-century women writers. Described as "the Mother of English Fiction" by Virginia Woolf in 1918, Fanny Burney was acclaimed by Anna Letitia Barbauld a hundred years earlier: "Scarcely any name, if any, stands higher in the list of novel-writers than that of Miss Burney".

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)

Following her first novel, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), Ann Radcliffe published A Sicilian Romance (1790) which was regarded by Sir Walter Scott as the first English poetical novel. This was followed by The Romance of the Forest (1791), dramatised by John Boaden. For The Mysteries of Udolpho, upon which her reputation rests, was one of the first Gothic novels and a masterpiece of the genre. The Mysteries of Udolpho is one of the classics of Gothic horror. Together with The Castle of Otranto: A Gothic Story by Horace Walpole and The Monk by Mathew Lewis, it helped to create the genre. It was to Influence both Mathew Lewis and Mary Shelley. Other writers who were strongly influenced by Ann Radcliffe included The Marquis de Sade, Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Walter Scott, who described her as "the first poetess of romantic fiction", a "mighty magician", and "the Great Enchantress". Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey is a parody of The Mysteries of Udolpho. It is also self-referential with her gullible heroine. Catherine Morland, being handed a copy of The Mysteries of Udolpho to read. The original is vastly superior to its parody. Ann Radcliffe's style of writing is extremely variable.

Ann Radcliffe was enormously popular in her day. Her use of Gothic techniques, her ability to arouse terror and curiosity in her readers by introducing events which are apparently supernatural, but which are afterwards carefully explained by natural means, was widely imitated but never surpassed. Her creation of tastefully imaginary horrors and her emphasis on the supernatural looked forward to the Romantics, while her rationalistic explanations hearkened back to the ordered world of the Augustans: her novels offered contemporary readers an opportunity to indulge their predilection for the bizarre, the outré and the unconventional by broadly hinting at the immoral and the supernatural while ultimately rectifying matters (from a societal point of view) by vindicating the Neoclassical virtues.