Frances Burney

13 June 1752 - 06 January 1840

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.

Full profile

Connections

Connections Sort descending	Author name	Excerpt
Friends, Associates	Cassandra, Lady Hawke	The young and very private Frances Burney , at an entertainment where the singer Pacchierotti was to perform, had an encounter with this terrible set Burney, Frances. Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay. Editors Barrett, Charlotte and Austin Dobson, Macmillan. 2: 66 —Cassandra, Lady Hawke , and her relations.
Friends, Associates	Elizabeth Montagu	The leading figures in the movement were Montagu herself (who spent freely in hospitality, and who was later dubbed the Queen of the Bluestockings or Queen of the Blues) and Carter (the most intellectually...
Friends, Associates	Harriet Lee	HL , like her sister, was personally friendly with many other writers of her day: Jane and Anna Maria Porter , Ann Radcliffe (even though the latter probably did not, as often reported, attend the...
Friends, Associates	Germaine de Staël	One of her associates in her English visit was the future husband of Frances Burney . Burney thought her a woman of the first abilities, very much in the style of Mrs Thrale but with...
Friends, Associates	Hannah More	Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke in Bristol the previous September...
Friends, Associates	Sophia Lee	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...
Friends, Associates	Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire	Frances Burney met and recorded her conflicted impressions of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire , and her family, and of Lady Elizabeth Foster . 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...

Timeline

May 1992

The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British Women Writers Association held its first annual conference. Thereafter the conference was held at a different American location each year.

Parker, Pamela Corpron. “A Conference of Our Own: on the 20th Anniversary of the BWWA”. The Female Spectator, Vol.

, No. 1, p. 6.

November 2003

A painting by John Hoppner entitled Portrait of a Lady as Evelina (Frances Burney 's earliest heroine, born in January 1778) sold at Sotheby 's to an unnamed private buyer for £173,600.

6 May 2009

The antiquarian book collection of the late Paula Fentress Peyraud (the largest in private hands), auctioned in New York, fetched more than $1.5 million US. Books by women between 1760 and 1830 predominated.

Texts

No bibliographical results available.