Jonty Claypole

We're going to introduce you to the bolters, the badasses, the barnstormers, the bold adventurers, the bloody minded and the bloody brilliant.

These are writers we love both because of their books.

and because they refused to be pinned down by the limitations of their age, and because they so inspired Jane herself.

And we're going to send everyone listening away with a reading list of one book by each trailblazer that we would love you to consider reading.

Boring!

Sophie, that was a great eagle eye view of the of the 18th century and the movements there which are leading and the history of the novel and how it leads up to Austen.

So we're now telescoping in Austen.

And we are starting with Frances Burney.

Frances Burney published a book called Evelina in 1778.

The subtitle is The History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, which is right there, pretty much you could have as a subtitle of almost every Jane Austen novel.

Evelina is a hugely influential book, and Jane Austen was kind of permanently indebted to it.

It's a sort of buildings romance of women

of a young lady called Evelina as she sort of enters into the world.

Fanny Burney herself is a delightful character.

So she was born in 1752.

She came from a sort of raffish, bohemian London family.

Her father was a musicologist and musician called Charles Burney, who I think was a delightful man.

And I will come back and give evidence of that in a moment.

We do love the Bernies.

Her mother was called Esther Sleep and her mother ran a business with her sisters making fans and other luxury items.