English Publications and Other Works

Source Publication (e.g., journal title)

The Age of Johnson

Author ORCID Identifier

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8632-5847

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2012

Abstract

Frances Burney could not stop writing Camilla (1796), the third and longest of her four novels. Multiple manuscript drafts of the novel exist: initial notes scattered between the British Library and the Berg Collection of the New York Public Library, two lengthy drafts in the Berg Collection (an early, incomplete version and an almost fair copy transcribed by Burney’s husband Alexandre d’Arblay, with a few corrections in Burney’s hand), forty-six double-sided sheets of deleted scenes at the British Library, and a manuscript leaf at the Houghton Library. The wealth of extant manuscript material for Camilla is unprecedented among Burney’s novels and is supplemented by Burney’s post-publication revisions. Camilla is the only novel that Burney heavily revised for a second edition (1802), and not long after the publication of her final novel, The Wanderer (1814), Burney began working on a third. The plot of Camilla is similarly expansive. Unlike her first two novels that center on a single heroine, Burney’s Camilla appears to be in the “prose Epic Style,” concentrating on a large family group and spanning several years, from the early childhoods through the young adulthoods of the youthful members of the Tyrold family. But Burney’s “epic” agenda is complicated by her various revisions, which can be seen as Camilla is transformed from early manuscript to published novel to second edition. Burney’s changes to Camilla were often radical in scope and were not always improvements. Throughout her revisions, Burney concentrated more on the heroine and major characters, progressively discarding secondary plot strands, reducing the characterization of minor figures, and distancing herself from the aims of “the prose Epic style.”

Submission Type

Pre-print

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