The Wanderer

by Frances Burney

Other authorsRobert L. Mack (Editor), Peter Sabor (Editor), Margaret Anne Doody (Editor), Margaret Anne Doody (Introduction)

Paperback, 1991

Status

Available

Call number

823.6

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Oxford University Press, USA (1991), Paperback, 1008 pages

Description

As a unnamed woman, known only as The Wanderer (although later identified as Juliet Granville,) flees the Reign of Terror to England, where she finds herself alone--friendless and without means--in a foreign land. Focusing on the difficulties women faced in gaining the independence, The Wanderer was part of a new genre of literature that grew out of the tumultuous period following the French Revolution in which authors examined the events of the past through fiction. The last novel to be written by Frances Burney, The Wanderer took fourteen years to write and was influenced partially by the author's time as an exile in France. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member Sarahursula

No eighteenth century novel begins as memorably as this one. Escaping the French Revolution, a group of English people are secreted on board a ship that just manages to flee the Reign of Terror. The last passenger to board is a mysterious black woman...
Okay, the novel never lives up to the

excitement of the opening and I wanted 'the incognita' to turn out to be Sir Thomas Bertram's mixed race child by one of his slaves in Antigua but it is incredibly fascinating. A whole other side to Jane Austen's world is here; the jolly determined working seamstresses, cruel rich women and predatory men - the sneer behind Wickham's charming smile. Don't read it because of the Austen connection - read it because Fanny Burney is yes at times like treading through mud - awful Johnsonian sentences and some hilarious gothick melodrama - but then you fall in and come across a precious brilliant bauble!

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LibraryThing member souloftherose

This is the last novel Frances Burney wrote and, for some reason, the only one not currently in print which I think is a shame because for me this is the strongest of her novels (although not necessarily the easiest to read).

Published in 1814 (the same year as Jane Austen's Mansfield Park) but

written more in an 18th century style and set mostly in England in 1793 against the background of the French Revolution, [The Wanderer] sets out how difficult it was for young women to survive at that time without the protection of a man or money (which generally also came from a man).

From a modern day viewpoint the book suffers from some repetitiveness in that Burney makes her heroine repeatedly try different solutions to her difficulties only to fail at each attempt but from an 18th/19th century perspective the point needed to be repeated. And whilst women now (thankfully) have more financial independence, the repeated themes of women being threatened by men, mistreated by men and doubted by men sadly felt all too relevant as I was reading this over the summer. So, not exactly a cheerful book despite the convenient 'happy' ending but I think an important one and one that deserves more attention (and an edition in print).

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