Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Frances Burney
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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.
This preface is headed by two Latin words (one with a faulty grammatical ending) from Ovid
's description of chaos. SG
slams both male and female novelists, chiefly authors of gothic or horrid novels and...
Textual Features
Sarah Green
The plot owes something to Charlotte Lennox
's Female Quixote. The father of Green's heroine has lived through many crazes for novelists: first Burney
, then Radcliffe
, then Owenson
, then Rosa Matilda
Friends, Associates
Martha Hale
MH
's wide circle of friends and acquaintances included leading politicians and other socially prominent figures of her day. She seems to have had personal friendships with John Moore
, Archbishop of Canterbury, and his...
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Ham
The story, set in Anglo-Saxon England, is that treated by Frances Burney
in her only play to reach the stage during her lifetime, Edwy and Elgiva. EH
was too young as well as...
Friends, Associates
Mary Harcourt
MH
became a friend and correspondent of Frances Burney
, and also of the prison reformer Elizabeth Fry
, to whom she wrote in early 1819
This letter is dated 1818 in the Memoir of...
Textual Features
Eliza Haywood
True to her name, EH
's heroine snubs Mr Trueworth because she really can't be bothered with him. She is already sorry before (ignoring ominous nightmares) she marries the egregious Mr Munden. He not only...
Textual Production
Felicia Hemans
Gary Kelly
speculates that Felicia Browne may have been the translator (signing F. B.) of Italian patriot and political exile Ugo Foscolo
's autobiographical novel Ultime Lettere di Jacopo Ortis in 1812.
Hemans, Felicia. “Introduction and Editorial Materials”. Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters, edited by Gary Kelly, Broadview, pp. 12 - 89; various pages.
21
A...
Friends, Associates
Caroline Herschel
Though CH
recorded in summer 1774 that she had lost her only female acquaintance (apparently because her work for her brother left her no time for social life), she later met Charles
and Frances Burney
Reception
Caroline Herschel
In the beginning CH
's reputation was usually judged more as that of a woman and a sister than as that of a scientist. Frances Burney
's admiration and delight was directed at her as...
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...
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...
Reception
Elizabeth Hervey
It has been until recently a given of literary history that William Beckford
had his half-sister in his sights in his two burlesques on women's novel-writing. The title-page of the first quotes Pope
, thus...
Intertextuality and Influence
Margaret Holford
The novel shows considerable skill but an excess of words and of characters. Selima, daughter of a clandestine marriage, is adopted by the old maid Anne Aubrey after being brought up initially by an old...
Family and Intimate relationships
Violet Hunt
Violet's aunt, Margaret
's elder sister, Annie Raine Ellis
, was the first to edit and publish, in 1889, Frances (Fanny) Burney
's Early Journals.
Belford, Barbara. Violet. Simon and Schuster.
20
She also wrote introductions and annotations for two of Burney's novels.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.
Intertextuality and Influence
Rachel Hunter
Rachel, an heiress, gives her heart to a poor man whose family oppose the match for fear of being seen as mercenary. She is also something of a social rebel, a feminist (fond of gender-bending...
