For anyone who’s wondering, I named the Burney family in honour of Frances Burney, a writer from the late 18th and early 19th centuries. She had four novels published. Her work was read and admired by Jane Austen. (And it was from Evelina that I borrowed the idea of a night at the fireworks.)
Similarly, the idea for the overall plot came to me when I read a song verse in Life in London by Pierce Egan, first published in 1821:
If once to Almack’s you belong,
Like Monarchs you can do no wrong;
But banished thence, on Wednesday night,
By Jove you can do nothing right.
As Georgette Heyer wrote in Arabella, this novel is a ‘Variation on an Original Theme’.