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 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
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
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
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...
Literary responses
Frances Brooke
FB
was listed by the Monthly Review as one of the nine British Muses in April 1774. Anna Seward
in 1796 recorded her preference of the lively Brooke to Frances Burney
, of whom each...
Literary responses
Ellis Cornelia Knight
Dinarbas was popular during ECK
's lifetime. It warranted fairly favourable mention from Frances Burney
, who wrote to a friend that if you could overlook the presumption of the idea of writing a continuation...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
The Critical Review, reviewing this book, called CS
a sister-queen
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
141
of the novel with Frances Burney
. William Enfield
in the Monthly praised it warmly.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
Neither the Critical nor the Monthly reviewer (the latter of whom was Andrew Becket
) seems to have looked back at notices of The Gamesters, since both assumed that the author of this novel...
Literary responses
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Frances Burney
thought this the best of all Barbauld's poems. Hannah More
wrote to thank ALB
for writing so well on a subject so near her, More's heart,
Paul, Lissa. The Children’s Book Business. Routledge.
On the strength of this novel the Critical Review hailed CS
as less agitating than Ann Radcliffe
, less diverting than Frances Burney
, but more true to nature than either. In the Monthly...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Mackenzie
The Critical Review gave high praise to this novel's characters, and said not many works of fiction excelled it, although it found the plot weak and in parts derivative: the wandering of Calista is perhaps...
Occupation
Caroline Herschel
Her brothers (William and Alexander) were away at the time delivering a ten-foot telescope to Hanover. Work was in progress on a forty-foot telescope, while the twenty-foot one was drawing crowds of visitors to Slough...
Occupation
Anna Miller
The day chosen was Friday, later switched to Thursday. The meetings took place in winter, the fashionable season at Bath, and upper-class visitors were eager to attend. Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire
visited during the first...
