Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Sarah Harriet Burney
-
Standard Name: Burney, Sarah Harriet
Birth Name: Sarah Harriotte Burney
Nickname: Sally
Used Form: the Author of Clarentine
SHB
was an early nineteenth-century novelist and letter-writer (though she began to publish before the end of the eighteenth century). Her achievements in both these genres have been obscured by those of her sister Frances. She wrote from financial necessity—I must scribble, or I cannot live
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
197
—but her later works especially rank high for quality and interest.
She had outlived her husband, her son, and all her siblings but Sarah Harriet
, to whom she left an annuity of two hundred pounds a year. She was buried at Wolcot Church in Bath...
Education
Mary Russell Mitford
MRM
was said to have learned to read by the time she was three. In January 1806 she got through fifty-five volumes, including books by Sarah Harriet Burney
, Maria Edgeworth
, Elizabeth Hamilton
,...
Family and Intimate relationships
Frances Burney
Youngest of the family was FB
's fellow-novelist Sarah Harriet Burney
, the daughter of the second marriage, who also worked as a governess.
Family and Intimate relationships
Elizabeth Meeke
This marriage gave little Elizabeth Allen four stepsisters: Esther
, Frances
, Susan
, and Charlotte Ann Burney
. She later acquired a half-sister, Sarah Harriet Burney
.
Sarah Harriet Burney
wrote of her: A more fluent...
Friends, Associates
Caroline Bowles
CB
's dealings with Blackwood's led to a positive working relationship with editor John Wilson
. She also maintained a long correspondence with Anna Eliza Bray
and (in later years) a shorter one with poet...
The elderly lady, Lady Arabella, represents a chilly view of the English aristocracy. She opens her story with a paean in praise of past times and in dispraise of the present: How interminably long the...
Leisure and Society
Lady Eleanor Butler
The Ladies and the rural ideal they embodied became famous in literary circles, an object of pilgrimage alike to the lesbian Anne Lister
and to more conventional figures like William Wordsworth
and the Irish poet...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Griffith
The original letters were immensely popular with readers (among others Sarah Harriet Burney
was a devotee); their authors became famous under their pseudonyms. Not everyone agreed in admiring them, however. Lady Bradshaigh
remarked to Samuel Richardson
Literary responses
Laetitia-Matilda Hawkins
This novel was reviewed in the same listing as Sense and Sensibility, by a Lady.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
3d ser. 24 (1811): 336
Readers (like Sarah Harriet Burney
) generally and justifiably identified the heroine with...
Literary responses
Mary Brunton
Brunton's English publisher, Longman
, registered in the year of publication that the book was in great demand and very much admired on the whole, though some complain of the later part of the work...
Literary responses
Catherine Hutton
The Miser Married was admired by Sarah Harriet Burney
(who struck up acquaintance with Hutton on the strength of it) as a clever amusing little book.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
205
It was the only one of her works...
Literary responses
Frances Burney
Burney's family were delighted. Her young half-sister Sarah Harriet
(who was about to publish her own first novel) sent her a perfect rhapsody of praise.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
17-18
A long review in the Analytical Review, probably...
Timeline
1 February 1814: The first number appeared of the New Monthly...
Writing climate item
1 February 1814
The first number appeared of the New Monthly Magazine: published initially by Henry Colburn
, it was said to be the earliest monthly to incorporate a miscellany of articles.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
459-60
Cox, Michael, editor. The Oxford Chronology of English Literature. Oxford University Press, 2002, 2 vols.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
179, 180n4
Texts
Burney, Sarah Harriet. Clarentine. G. C. and J. Robinson, 1796, 3 vols.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. “Editor’s Introduction”. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, edited by Lorna J. Clark, Georgia University Press, 1997.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. Geraldine Fauconberg. G. Wilkie and J. Robinson, 1808, 3 vols.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. Tales of Fancy. Henry Colburn, 1816, 3 vols.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Romance of Private Life. Henry Colburn, 1839, 3 vols.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. Traits of Nature. Henry Colburn, 1812, 5 vols.
