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.
On the strength of this novel the Critical Review hailed CS
as less agitating than Ann Radcliffe
, less diverting than Frances Burney
, but more true to nature than either. In the Monthly...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Mackenzie
The Critical Review gave high praise to this novel's characters, and said not many works of fiction excelled it, although it found the plot weak and in parts derivative: the wandering of Calista is perhaps...
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...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Bennett
William Enfield
in the Monthly Review thought this book an inferior imitation of Burney
's Cecilia, but added a little faint praise. The Critical, with depressing predictability, censured AMB
's intricate plot and...
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...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
Samuel Taylor Coleridge reviewed this novel somewhat belatedly for the Critical Review.
Wordsworth, Jonathan. The Bright Work Grows: Women Writers of the Romantic Age. Woodstock Books.
81
The review in the Analytical, probably Wollstonecraft
's, offered strong endorsement. AR
's uncommon talent for gothic, it said, had...
Literary responses
Georgiana Fullerton
Henry Fothergill Chorley
, reviewing the novel for the Athenæum, found Grantley Manorhaunted by the intertextual spectre of Jane Austen
's Emma; he also drew parallels with Frances Burney
's Cecilia...
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...
Literary responses
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Hester Lynch Piozzi
evidently felt later that these stories were very strong meat for children. She commented in a letter, I think a great Change has been made in Taste of popular Literature—or rather popular...
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
Literary responses
Charlotte Lennox
Samuel Johnson
pronounced in conversation that CL
was worthy to rank with the exceptional women Carter
, More
, and Burney
: more yet, she was superiour to them all.
Boswell, James. Boswell’s Life of Johnson. Editors Hill, George Birkbeck and Laurence Fitzroy Powell, Clarendon.
4: 275
Occupation
Anna Miller
The day chosen was Friday, later switched to Thursday. The meetings took place in winter, the fashionable season at Bath, and upper-class visitors were eager to attend. Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire
visited during the first...
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.