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.
197
—but her later works especially rank high for quality and interest.
This novel was reviewed in the same listing as Sense and Sensibility, by a Lady.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall.
3d ser. 24 (1811): 336
Readers (like Sarah Harriet Burney
) generally and justifiably identified the heroine with...
Reception
Elizabeth Hervey
The publisher, Henry Colburn
, sent a pretty bound copy to Sarah Harriet Burney
. She (unfortunately for the literary historian, since her opinion would be worth having) apparently thanked him for it before she...
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.
205
It was the only one of her works...
Intertextuality and Influence
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
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...
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
.
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
,...
Literary responses
Hannah More
Sarah Harriet Burney
had high praise for it. The chapter on the smaller-scale faults and virtues, she said, merits to be written in letters of gold.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press.
Sarah Harriet Burney
's first impression of this work was favourable: it promises facility of style, & I think I shall like it.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press.
201
Literary responses
Hester Lynch Piozzi
This work was much noticed, making HLP
one of the twenty-four most-reviewed women writers of 1789-90.
Hawkins, Ann R., and Stephanie Eckroth, editors. Romantic Women Writers Reviewed. Vol. 3 vols., Ashgate Publishing Company.
Again she fell foul of critics: this time for her colloquial (sometimes ungrammatical) style and deliberately informal manner. A...
Textual Features
Anna Maria Porter
This is set during the Thirty Years War. As Sarah Harriet Burney
remarked, the period at which she makes her people act and talk, is during the Protestant War in Germany; she carries you...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Porter
Burney
offered a detailed informal critique. She found the novel full of the most touching passages, but stated that, as a whole, it drags.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press.
230
She did, however, praise AMP
's meticulous attention to detail:...
Reception
Germaine de Staël
Sarah Harriet Burney
, like her famous sister, was troubled at GS
's unconventionality. She wrote that she yawned over De l'Allemagneand yet, here and there, was electrified by a flash of sublimity. Do...
