Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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.
Their school, together with their literary careers, brought SL
and her sisters a wide circle of friends and contacts, including Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
. The novelist Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins describes Sophia as surrounded...
Friends, Associates
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
She met a number of English literary people including Frances Burney
, who later reported how de Genlis had remarked that English comedies were such that no modest woman ought to attend them. British journals...
Friends, Associates
Frances Reynolds
Frances Burney
comments on FR
less as a victim than as a joker with a mask of naiveté. She thought that Reynolds got upset too easily over trivia and was hamperingly indecisive. She reported her...
Friends, Associates
Mary Delany
MD
continued to make new friends late in life (though she was said to have declined to meet Hester Thrale
).
Jones, Mary Gwladys. Hannah More. Cambridge University Press.
60
The king
and queen
were remarkably attentive to her in her widowhood. Prominent...
Friends, Associates
Vernon Lee
Cornelia corresponded regularly with Violet for four years (until her death), encouraging the latter's interests in European, especially Italian, literature and music, as well as the development of Violet's own work. Cornelia gave Violet a...
Foreman, Amanda. Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. HarperCollins.
256-60
Friends, Associates
Mary Matilda Betham
Meanwhile Edward Jerningham
, Charlotte's uncle (himself a writer), took an interest in MMB
's development.
Lewis Bettany
has no index entry for MMB
in his Edward Jerningham and His Friends, 1919: unsurprisingly, since...
Friends, Associates
Susannah Dobson
Rather like her friend Lennox, Dobson had difficulty making her way in literary London society. She got off on the wrong foot with Frances Burney
in 1780 by spreading word of the authorship of Evelina...
Friends, Associates
Oliver Goldsmith
Goldsmith met and became a friend and associate of Edmund Burke
, Samuel Johnson
, Sir Joshua Reynolds
, and others belonging to the Club, of which he was a founder member. He was a...
Friends, Associates
Samuel Johnson
Boswell's is Johnson's most famous friendship, but his women friends were immensely important to him. Carter and Lennox were joined by Hester Thrale
(though Johnson always reckoned her husband, Henry Thrale
, if anything the...
Friends, Associates
Henrietta Maria Bowdler
Frances Burney
preferred HMB
, as more kind and gentle, to her sister Frances Bowdler. Burney amusingly records a visit by herself, HMB and others, to Lady Miller
of Batheaston on 8 June 1780, when...
Friends, Associates
Caroline Herschel
Though CH
recorded in summer 1774 that she had lost her only female acquaintance (apparently because her work for her brother left her no time for social life), she later met Charles
and Frances Burney
Friends, Associates
Cassandra Cooke
CC
became well acquainted with Frances Burney
soon after Burney married and settled with her husband at Great Bookham for four years, becoming Samuel Cooke's parishioners.
Burney, Frances. The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay). Editors Hemlow, Joyce and Althea Douglas, Clarendon Press.
3: 2-3
After that the women were regular correspondents...
Friends, Associates
Frances Brooke
As a result of her friendship with the musicologist Charles Burney
(1726-1814), FB
became a friend of his daughter Frances
as well.
McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press.
135
Frances Burney liked Brooke, but was worried at her close friendship with...
Intertextuality and Influence
Sarah Fielding
Other women novelists found this a fertile text. Critic Susan Catto
suggested that the social ignorance of Lennox
's Arabella owes something to that of Ophelia. She also noted that at a ball the heroine...
