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	Author name Sort descending	Excerpt
Textual Production	Anna Maria Bennett	This was again anonymous; some thought it by Frances Burney . AMB dedicated it to another of George III 's children, Prince William Henry (a naval officer who would be in a position to offer...
Intertextuality and Influence	Anna Maria Bennett	AMB 's usual huge cast of characters ranging from satirical to sentimental is introduced by a preface signed by one of them, explaining that what follows will be the autobiographical tale of her chequered existence...
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...
Literary responses	Elizabeth Bonhote	The Critical Review placed this novel in the middle of the first rank of fiction, calling it very interesting and pleasing Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press. 1: 468 although too much like Burney 's Cecilia. Andrew Becket in the Monthly agreed. Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press. 1: 468
Friends, Associates	Henrietta Maria Bowdler	Frances Burney preferred HMB , as more kind and gentle, to her sister Frances Bowdler. Burney amusingly records a visit by herself, HMB and others, to Lady Miller of Batheaston on 8 June 1780, when...
Intertextuality and Influence	Amelia Bristow	The Maniac deals with the effects of the Irish Rebellion. The narrator, Albert, has gone mad after returning home to find his house sacked and wife and children murdered. His sister, Emma, also dies and...
Textual Production	Frances Brooke	FB invited Frances Burney to collaborate with her on a new periodical; Burney declined. The date is from Brooke's letter expressing regret. McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press. 204-5, 235n2
Friends, Associates	Frances Brooke	As a result of her friendship with the musicologist Charles Burney (1726-1814), FB became a friend of his daughter Frances as well. McMullen, Lorraine. An Odd Attempt in a Woman: The Literary Life of Frances Brooke. University of British Columbia Press. 135 Frances Burney liked Brooke, but was worried at her close friendship with...
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...
Family and Intimate relationships	Selina Bunbury	SB greatly admired Frances Burney , who was a family connection by marriage—an unfortunate connection, in fact, since Molesworth Phillips , who married Frances's closest sister, Susan , and proved a cruel husband, was SB
Family and Intimate relationships	Sarah Harriet Burney	Her famous half-sister, the writer Frances Burney , was almost a generation her senior.
Textual Features	Sarah Harriet Burney	Its plot concerns an idealised and under-appreciated orphan playing Cinderella among her richer cousins. It includes a sketch of an idealised Madame d'Arzele living in country retirement in England with a noble French refugee: a...
Literary responses	Sarah Harriet Burney	Clarentine was a successful debut. The Critical Review (which opened its brief review on the author's relationship to her elder sister ) said it was greatly superior to novels of the ordinary stamp; and it...
Textual Production	Sarah Harriet Burney	Colburn originally wanted to publish two volumes of tales together; then he agreed to publish The Shipwreck immediately if a second volume could be ready soon after Christmas 1815. He had advertised volume one on...
Literary responses	Lady Charlotte Bury	Edward Copeland argues that this text, though designed to ride the wave of the new silver-fork novel, draws its influences from an earlier generation: Frances Burney , Susan Ferrier , and Richardson 's Sir Charles...

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.