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.
The plot of this novel is a version of a romance archetype: poor but deserving girl confounds all expectations by marrying up. Elizabeth Bennet is the quintessence of the witty and resourceful heroine who had...
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
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...
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
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...
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
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
Edward Copeland discerns influences from Burney
's Evelina and The Wanderer.
Copeland, Edward. The Silver Fork Novel. Cambridge University Press.
179
Textual Features
Susannah Dobson
SD
says her previous choice of subjects (Petrarch and the troubadours) was dictated by the feeling that it was well worth while to pass over a multitude of tyrants, whose lives are written in blood...
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...
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...
Reception
Beatrix Potter
She sometimes wrote of her own drawing and painting as an obsession: Why cannot one be content to look at it? I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result. But also, watching and...
