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.
An introduction explains that this book, although called a novel, will not deal in pathetic tales of love, marvellous prodigies, or even . . . elegant flights of fancy, but only plain simple facts...
Textual Production
Angela Thirkell
She was anxious about publication, partly because she had not told her parents that she was writing a novel: this led her mentor W. Graham Robertson
to liken her to Fanny Burney
.
Strickland, Margot. Angela Thirkell: Portrait of a Lady Novelist. Duckworth.
75-6
From...
Textual Features
Elizabeth Thomas
The range of authors quoted for chapter-headings is similar to that in her last novel, with the notable addition of passages in both prose and poetry by Martha Homely, her own formerly-used pseudonym. Poems...
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
1: 364
He noted borrowings from his sister
's Evelina and Cecilia, and forecast that the author would improve with...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Elizabeth Sophia Tomlins
Her protagonist, Theresa Morven, has until three years before the story opens been buried in a French convent at the behest of her stepmother, whom, however, she steadfastly refuses to hate. (Her own mother died...
Textual Features
Helena Wells
HW
says she has more respect for the upper classes than some of our modern reformists.
Wells, Helena. Letters on Subjects of Importance to the Happiness of Young Females. L. Peacock; W. Creech.
7
She recommends reading poetry and history, not novels: Novel reading tends to enervate the mind. We rise from...
Friends, Associates
Anna Williams
Williams enjoyed cordial relations with other members of Johnson's circle, like Elizabeth Carter
(who helped with subscriptions for Williams's book when Johnson was dragging his feet) and Hester Thrale
(who contributed). Carter counted her a...
HMW
achieved early success as a poet. George Hardinge
was trying in autumn 1786 to secure her a Court position similar to that of Frances Burney
. He did not succeed in this attempt.
Kennedy, Deborah. Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution. Bucknell University Press.
33-4
Intertextuality and Influence
Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
A few statements are footnoted to their originators, whom EPW
has either paraphrased or versified: Sherlock and Lavater
are her favourites, but she also draws on lighter writers like Horace
, Swift
, and Coleridge
Textual Features
Virginia Woolf
She writes more directly of money, of the riches lavished through the ages on masculine institutions like the ancient universities, but here too her clinching example is one of the imagination: her contrast of the...
Textual Features
Mary Julia Young
MJY
foregrounds her own friendship with Anna Maria Crouch, and finds room for such details as the opinions of Crouch's father, Peregrine Phillips
, about novelists: he admired Charlotte Smith
, Anna Maria Bennett
,...
