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.
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
The Case presents itself as a rendering of the truth for God to read, if nobody else. It depicts MC
according to several different fictional conventions. In youth she resembles the heroines of the Restoration...
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.
By early 1782, when she met with Frances Burney
, CLH
had written or drafted two novels. According to her sister, Lady Saye and Sele
(who was keen that Burney should read them both), one...
Textual Production
Cassandra, Lady Hawke
Lady Saye and Sele
told Burney
that one of the unpublished novels by her sister is in letters, like yours. . . it's called the 'Mausoleum of Julia'!
Burney, Frances. Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay. Editors Barrett, Charlotte and Austin Dobson, Macmillan.
It seems to have been a success, judging from a Dublin edition and a French translation the same year, and a German translation in 1789.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 439
Once the novel was published, CLHdesired permission...
Literary responses
Cassandra, Lady Hawke
CLH
's immediate family were warm in their admiration. Frances Burney
, who read Julia de Gramont when it was passed to her by the queen, found it all of a piece—all love, love, love...
Intertextuality and Influence
Susanna Centlivre
From this plot Frances Burney
borrowed the four guardians of her heroine in Cecilia. Walter Scott
thought the plot was extravagant enough (when the play was a hundred and ten years old) yet that...
Textual Production
Hester Mulso Chapone
HMC
's surviving letters span the years both before and after her marriage. Apart from her best-known letters, exchanged with Richardson
himself, Richardson's circle, and other Bluestockings of the original generation, she corresponded with Frances Burney
Reception
Emily Frederick Clark
From EFC
's letters to the Royal Literary Fund
it would seem that she entertained a very modest estimate of her own talents. Late in her career, for example, she calls her own works very...
Intertextuality and Influence
Jane Collier
The Monthly Review was moderately laudatory about the Art of Tormenting; it picked up on the relationship to Swift
.
Griffiths, Ralph, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
8 (1753): 274
JC
's commonplace-book commented wryly on a man who declared that...
Textual Production
Cassandra Cooke
As well as writings by CC
now among the Beachcroft family private archive (at the Bodleian Library
) and the Stoneleigh papers (at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
, Stratford-upon-Avon), the letters whose backs Frances Burney
Family and Intimate relationships
Cassandra Cooke
Cassandra's cousin Jane Austen
criticised the household management of Samuel Cooke (who was her godfather), judging him a disagreable, fidgetty master to his servants.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
In his professional capacity he worried about competing with the Methodists
Friends, Associates
Cassandra Cooke
CC
became well acquainted with Frances Burney
soon after Burney married and settled with her husband at Great Bookham for four years, becoming Samuel Cooke's parishioners.
Burney, Frances. The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay). Editors Hemlow, Joyce and Althea Douglas, Clarendon Press.
3: 2-3
After that the women were regular correspondents...
Intertextuality and Influence
Cassandra Cooke
In a preface CC
says she found the incident that forms the centre of this novel in The Christian Life by Dr John Scott
(that is The Christian Life, from its beginning to its consummation...
