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.
"Frances Burney" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Frances_d%27Arblay_%28%27Fanny_Burney%27%29_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpg/840px-Frances_d%27Arblay_%28%27Fanny_Burney%27%29_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpg.
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...
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 364
He noted borrowings from his sister
's Evelina and Cecilia, and forecast that the author would improve with...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The series has a general introduction, On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing, and a Preface, Biographical and Critical for each novelist, which in its echo of the full and original title of Johnson's...
Textual Features
Ann Thicknesse
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 Features
Helen Craik
Authors quoted on HC
's title-page include La Rochefoucauld
. Mary Robinson
's Walsingham is quoted in volume two and supplies the epigraph for volume three.
Craciun, Adriana, and Kari E. Lokke, editors. “The New Cordays: Helen Craik and British Representations of Charlotte Corday, 1793-1800”. Rebellious Hearts: British Women Writers and the French Revolution, State University of New York Press, 2001, pp. 193-32.
228n47
The story opens shortly before the French Revolution...
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 Features
Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
In setting this novel in remote Donegal, Morgan continued her project of explaining her native land to her English readership. Her Irish hero, Roderick O'Donnel, is that almost unbelievable thing, an Irish gentleman who...
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...
Textual Features
Sarah Scott
The French heroine tells her own life-story. Her mother dies at her birth. Among various persecutions, she is abducted and imprisoned in one of those rooms, not uncommonly found in old castles, where the owner...
Textual Features
Phebe Gibbes
The heroine, who is initially called Ella, is represented as needing to read novels in order to learn about social skills, duties, and distinctions as depicted by a Brooks
[sic], a Sheridan
, a Burney
Textual Features
Isabella Ormston Ford
In this pamphlet, which she directed towards the middle and upper classes, IOF
declares herself interested in both the moral condition and the economic position of industrial women.
Ford, Isabella Ormston. Industrial Women and How to Help Them. Humanitarian League, 1901.
1
She argues that prostitution has economic...
Textual Features
Lady Anne Barnard
In a striking parallel with the young Frances Burney
, she makes her writing her confidante: in thy Breast can secrets rest, / Thy chattering tongue will neer reveal, / What we require thee to...
Textual Features
L. E. L.
The novel also has a strong political element. It comments on the power of newspapers in national life, through reporting and editorials but also through advertising. Mr Delawarr is, says literary historian Edward Copeland, a...
