Fanny Burney's lighthearted first novel, completed after nine years of secret labor, was published anonymously in January 1778. Before the end of that year, it had gone through four editions--a huge popular success. In Burney's own words, it is the story, written in letters, of a young woman "of obscure birth, but conspicuous beauty," who "makes, a...more
Walter Hartright, a drawing instructor, comes to Limmeridge House to teach Laura and Marion Halcombe. He falls in love with Laura, but she is betrothed to someone else, and he must therefore leave Limmeridge. Before he goes, he tells Marian about his encounter with a beautiful woman dressed entirely in white, whom he later discovers escaped from an...more
A simplified edition of the autobiographical novel whose hero, an orphan boy in nineteenth-century England, successfully overcomes an unhappy childhood.