… what she perceived to be the flaws of early nineteenth-century society. People > Art and Literature Mots-clés Fiction Masquerade Memoirs Theatre Women Best known as a novelist and chronicler of London’s literary circles, Frances Burney was … Place (where he would have been neighbour to the bluestocking Elizabeth Montagu), and – after enjoying the balls and masquerades there with some trepidation – she is shocked to find he cannot pay the massive debts he has run up with the … for the first time, thus giving latter-day readers a good introduction to eighteenth-century conversations, plays, masquerades, balls, and notions of fun, though tinged with a moral preference for domestic activities on the part of the …