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.
The plot of this novel is a version of a romance archetype: poor but deserving girl confounds all expectations by marrying up. Elizabeth Bennet is the quintessence of the witty and resourceful heroine who had...
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Phebe Gibbes
The heroine, who is initially called Ella, is represented as needing to read novels in order to learn about social skills, duties, and distinctions as depicted by a Brooks
[sic], a Sheridan
, a Burney
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Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Edward Copeland discerns influences from Burney
's Evelina and The Wanderer.
Copeland, Edward. The Silver Fork Novel. Cambridge University Press.
179
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Sarah Scott
The French heroine tells her own life-story. Her mother dies at her birth. Among various persecutions, she is abducted and imprisoned in one of those rooms, not uncommonly found in old castles, where the owner...
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L. E. L.
The novel also has a strong political element. It comments on the power of newspapers in national life, through reporting and editorials but also through advertising. Mr Delawarr is, says literary historian Edward Copeland, a...
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Ann Thicknesse
An introduction explains that this book, although called a novel, will not deal in pathetic tales of love, marvellous prodigies, or even . . . elegant flights of fancy, but only plain simple facts...
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Susannah Dobson
SD
says her previous choice of subjects (Petrarch and the troubadours) was dictated by the feeling that it was well worth while to pass over a multitude of tyrants, whose lives are written in blood...
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Elizabeth Thomas
The range of authors quoted for chapter-headings is similar to that in her last novel, with the notable addition of passages in both prose and poetry by Martha Homely, her own formerly-used pseudonym. Poems...
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Judith Kazantzis
A cover sheet lists the contents, with a sketch map of London in 1780 (the year the riots happened, in early June), a list of further reading, and some questions for essays or discussion. Six...
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Mary Ann Kelty
At the end of the first volume Mortimer twice proposes to Eliza: once face to face and unpremeditatedly, then by letter. She does not accept him. By the end of the next volume he is...
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Sarah Green
The tone of the work is conservative, leavened with an intelligent concern for development of independent thinking. Topics of various letters include Conduct and Conversation, Forbearance, Chastity, Truth, Employment of Time...
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Charlotte Smith
CS
regularly, however, interspersed in her novels specimens of the poetry on which she prided herself more. Her fiction mixes pathos and satire. She may depict mountains and castles, but draws on her own life...
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Helena Wells
HW
says she has more respect for the upper classes than some of our modern reformists.
Wells, Helena. Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females. L. Peacock; W. Creech.
7
She recommends reading poetry and history, not novels: Novel reading tends to enervate the mind. We rise from...
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Sarah Green
The plot owes something to Charlotte Lennox
's Female Quixote. The father of Green's heroine has lived through many crazes for novelists: first Burney
, then Radcliffe
, then Owenson
, then Rosa Matilda
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
