Frances Burney

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Standard Name: Burney, Frances
Birth Name: Frances Burney
Nickname: Fanny
Nickname: The Old Lady
Married Name: Frances D'Arblay
Indexed Name: Madame D'Arblay
Pseudonym: A Sister of the Order
Used Form: the author of Evelina
Used Form: the author of Evelina and Cecilia
Used Form: the author of Evelina, Cecilia, and Camilla
FB , renowned as a novelist in her youth and middle age, outlived her high reputation; her fourth and last novel (published in 1814) was her least well received. Her diaries and letters, posthumously published, were greeted with renewed acclaim. During the late twentieth century the re-awakening of interest in her fiction and the rediscovery of her plays revealed her as a woman of letters to be reckoned with. Today her reputation in the academic world stands high, and productions of her plays are no longer isolated events.
Photo of the painting of Frances Burney by her cousin Edward Francisco Burney, c. 1784-5. She is turned to the viewer's left with lowered gaze, wearing a long-sleeved pale pink gown with a pink bow and a dark shawl; but the portrait is dominated by her huge hat with puffed-up crown and bow of broad ribbon. National Portrait Gallery

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Wealth and Poverty Anne Marsh
Their move back to England was facilitated by a legacy of £5,000 from Anne's father.
Heath-Caldwell, J. J. “Letters, References and Notes (1780-1874), Relating to James Caldwell and Anne Marsh (Marsh-Caldwell)”. Ancestors and Relatives of JJ Heath-Caldwell.
1839-1842
They bought the estate the previous year for £13,000 (including standing timber worth £3,280). AM sold the house, estate...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Jenkins
This biography, full and scholarly though not footnoted, is written with a kind of nostalgia for past times. It opens with a paragraph on the contrast between modern ugliness and the beauty of eighteenth-century design...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Maria Riddell
The diary records some of her literary tastes: she copied there a letter expressing her dislike of tragedies (which, no matter how moral, she felt to be harmful to the mind because of the violent...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Vernon Lee
In her first essay, Lee offers a summary analysis of the English novelistic tradition. Judging them especially, though not entirely, on their treatments of morality, she evaluates writers including Jane Austen , Maria Edgeworth ,...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Geraldine Jewsbury
Zoe reflects GJ 's own lifelong spiritual crisis.
Bloom, Abigail Burnham, editor. Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers. Greenwood Press.
223-4
Susanne Howe notes that it anticipates later novels by Mary Augusta Ward and J. A. Froude , which also deal with spiritual doubt.
Howe, Susanne. Geraldine Jewsbury: Her Life and Errors. George Allen and Unwin.
72
Beginning in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Julia Kavanagh
In this second work of women's literary history, JK once again limits herself to the novel. Her canon comprises ten authors, from Aphra Behn to Sydney Morgan by way of Sarah Fielding , Frances Burney
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anna Seward
AS 's correspondence often deals with literary matters as well as with social matters and personalities. She writes with astonishing freedom to Hester Piozzi about the latter's travel book Observations and Reflections: not only...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Katharine Elwood
Some of the British women writers discussed in the text remain well-known, but others have slipped into obscurity. Memoirs includes: Lady Mary Wortley Montagu , Griselda Murray , Frances Seymour, Lady Hertford , Hester Lynch Piozzi
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Anne Katharine Elwood
Her narratives detail the life events, character, appearance, and publication histories of the various authors. Frequently, as in the case of Austen , she devotes more time to sketching a physical and mental character than...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Adelaide O'Keeffe
The focus on education still allows much memorable extraneous detail. One of the characters for a moment thinks a seated clerical figure is a ghost. Topics discussed in stimulating detail among the adult characters include...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins
Her protagonist, Theresa Morven, has until three years before the story opens been buried in a French convent at the behest of her stepmother, whom, however, she steadfastly refuses to hate. (Her own mother died...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Beryl Bainbridge
Most of this novel's characters—Thrale, Johnson, the child Queeney, Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins (in response to whose proddings Queeney produces her retrospective part of the narrative), Giuseppe Baretti , James Boswell , Frances Burney —left their own...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Eva Figes
Though she mentions such writers as Eliza Haywood and Mary Davys , she begins her detailed discussion with the 1790s (a time which twenty years on would be regarded as somewhat late in the history...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Camilla Crosland
In the preface she declares that she sought to simply set before the young women of the present day examples of wives and mothers who have done their duty under difficulties and temptations; and if...
Textual Production Elizabeth Meeke
Probably the last full-length fiction to appear by EM was published in her name: What Shall Be, Shall Be. A Novel; again a character name was borrowed from Frances Burney .
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
2: 561

Timeline

1756 or 1757: Frances Greville, in Italy with her family...

Women writers item

1756 or 1757

Frances Greville , in Italy with her family some months after the death of her eldest son (aged around six), composed a poem which became a landmark text, the Ode to [or Prayer for] Indifference.

1780: James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as...

Writing climate item

1780

James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.

1782: George Romney painted a picture to illustrate...

Women writers item

1782

George Romney painted a picture to illustrate (after the fact) William Hayley 'a Triumphs of Temper, 1781: Serena, reading Burney 's Evelina. The model was Honora Sneyd .

1784: Henry Fearon, surgeon, published A Treatise...

Building item

1784

Henry Fearon , surgeon, published A Treatise on Cancers, with a New and Successful Method of Operating, Particularly in Cancers of the Breast and Testis.

By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...

Women writers item

By 22 July 1797

William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.

1798: Richard Polwhele published The Unsex'd Females,...

Building item

1798

Richard Polwhele published The Unsex'd Females, his notorious attack on Wollstonecraft and other active radicals.

27 March 1802: The Peace of Amiens ended the war which had...

National or international item

27 March 1802

The Peace of Amiens ended the war which had raged between England and France for nine years.

August 1813: The Critical Review published its first welcome...

Writing climate item

August 1813

The Critical Review published its first welcome to Eaton Stannard Barrett 's famous parody of sentimental novels, The Heroine, or Adventures of the Fair Romance Reader.

Early 1818: William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets,...

Writing climate item

Early 1818

William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets, the last of his Lectures on the English Poets, with a statement on gender issues.

9 December 1826: The Literary Gazette printed a Key to Marianne...

Women writers item

9 December 1826

The Literary Gazette printed a Key to Marianne Spencer Hudson 's silver-fork novel, Almack's (titled after the well-known elite gentlemen's club of the same name), which had already reached its second edition this year. The...

1835: Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville were...

National or international item

1835

Caroline Herschel and Mary Somerville were awarded honorary memberships by the Royal Astronomical Society .

17 June 1843: Julia Charlotte Maitland published, as a...

Women writers item

17 June 1843

Julia Charlotte Maitland published, as a Lady, her Letters fromMadras: during the years 1836-1839.

1864: Famous Girls who have become Illustrious...

Writing climate item

1864

Famous Girls who have become Illustrious Women: Forming Models for Imitation by the Young Women of England, a very popular book of biographical sketches by John M. Darton , was published.

1866: The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme...

National or international item

1866

The Royal Society of Arts established a scheme (believed to be the first in the world) for setting up commemorative plaques on buildings associated with famous people.
Quinn, Ben. “Plaque blues. Cuts hit heritage scheme”. Guardian Weekly, p. 16.

1872: US writer Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncy,...

Writing climate item

1872

US writer Susan Coolidge (Sarah Chauncy, or Chauncey, Woolsey) published her highly popular and influential story for girls entitled What Katy Did.
American National Biography. http://www.anb.org/articles/home.html.

Texts

Burney, Frances. A Busy Day. Editor Wallace, Tara Ghoshal, Rutgers University Press, 1984.
Burney, Frances. A Known Scribbler: Frances Burney on Literary Life. Editor Crump, Justine, Broadview, 2002.
Burney, Frances. Brief Reflections Relative to the Emigrant French Clergy. T. Cadell, 1793.
Burney, Frances. Camilla. T. Payne, T. Cadell, Jun., and W. Davies, 1796.
Burney, Frances. Camilla. Editors Bloom, Edward A. and Lillian D. Bloom, Oxford University Press, 1972.
Burney, Frances. Cecilia. T. Payne and Son, and T. Cadell, 1782.
Burney, Frances. Cecilia. Editors Sabor, Peter and Margaret Anne Doody, Oxford University Press, 1999.
Burney, Frances. Diary and Letters of Madame d’’Arblay. Editor Barrett, Charlotte, H. Colburn, 1846.
Burney, Frances. Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay. Editors Barrett, Charlotte and Austin Dobson, Macmillan, 1905.
Burney, Frances. Evelina. T. Lowndes, 1778.
Burney, Frances. “Introduction and front matter”. Journals and Letters, edited by Peter Sabor and Lars E. Troide, Penguin, 2001, p. vii - xxviii.
Burney, Frances. Journals and Letters. Editors Sabor, Peter and Lars E. Troide, Penguin, 2001.
Burney, Frances. Memoirs of Doctor Burney. Edward Moxon, 1832.
Burney, Frances. The Complete Plays of Frances Burney. Editor Sabor, Peter, William Pickering, 1995.
Burney, Frances. The Early Diary of Frances Burney, 1768-1778. Editor Ellis, Annie Raine, G. Bell, 1889.
Burney, Frances. The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney. Editors Troide, Lars E. et al., McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2002.
Burney, Frances. The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney. Editors Troide, Lars E. et al., Clarendon Press, 2002.
Burney, Frances. The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay). Editors Hemlow, Joyce and Althea Douglas, Clarendon Press, 1984.
Burney, Frances. The Wanderer. Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, 1814.