Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Burney
-
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.
The Critical Review placed this novel in the middle of the first rank of fiction, calling it very interesting and pleasing
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 468
although too much like Burney
's Cecilia. Andrew Becket
in the Monthly agreed.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 468
Literary responses
Charlotte Lennox
Samuel Johnson
pronounced in conversation that CL
was worthy to rank with the exceptional women Carter
, More
, and Burney
: more yet, she was superiour to them all.
Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Editors Hill, George Birkbeck and Laurence Fitzroy Powell, Clarendon.
4: 275
Literary responses
Charlotte Lennox
The novel was noticed in the Critical Review, which approved it, while diagnosing too much reliance on ideas from Frances Burney
.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
2nd ser. 2 (1791): 233
Literary responses
Charlotte Lennox
CL
kept copies of a number of verse tributes to her talents. She was one among the painter Richard Samuel
's The Nine Living Muses of Great Britain in 1778 (exhibited 1779).
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection (Concluded)”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
19
, No. 4, pp. 416-35.
429-31
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford.
199
It...
Literary responses
Jane Austen
Some Austen news items are regrettable. In an interview with the Royal Geographical Society
in June 2011, V.S. Naipaul
, in asserting his own superiority to women writers (and claiming he could tell male from...
Literary responses
Catherine Gore
The year after these two novels appeared, a writer in The New Spirit of the Age measured CG
unflatteringly against the humour of Frances Burney
or the lifelike precision of Jane Austen
, but credited...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Hervey
The Critical Reviewread this pleasing and interesting story as an imitation of Burney
's Cecilia.If there is a fault, it suggested, it was the structural fault of raising and solving one difficulty...
Leisure and Society
Joanna Baillie
In the earlier 1840s, however, she was still a keen reader. She tackled the first edition of Frances Burney
's Diary and Letters out of a desire to get some insight into the literary society...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Holford
The novel shows considerable skill but an excess of words and of characters. Selima, daughter of a clandestine marriage, is adopted by the old maid Anne Aubrey after being brought up initially by an old...
Intertextuality and Influence
Charlotte Smith
Three women help each other escape male persecution; the distressed heroine gets an ideal husband, Godolphin, who restores the social status which her illegitimate birth had robbed her of. Though the castle where Emmeline grows...
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...
Intertextuality and Influence
Rachel Hunter
Rachel, an heiress, gives her heart to a poor man whose family oppose the match for fear of being seen as mercenary. She is also something of a social rebel, a feminist (fond of gender-bending...
Intertextuality and Influence
Helen Craik
The novel had been advertised in April as to be published speedily.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 669
It appeared before the end of the year through the Minerva Press
in three volumes, with a frontispiece and French...
Intertextuality and Influence
Nancy Mitford
This is another worldly satirical comedy. The parents in question are divided by nationality (Grace is English, Charles is French) and class (bourgeoisie and nobility). Their son Sigismund, or Sigi, delights in setting one against...
Intertextuality and Influence
Lady Caroline Lamb
The title-page of volume one of Graham Hamilton quotes Burns
; the second quotes Swift
denouncing scandal. Though quieter, this novel again displays splendid satirical energy. It contains only one lyric (written by Nathan for...
