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.
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...
Friends, Associates
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Joanna Baillie
, who lived near the Barbaulds in Hampstead, was one of ALB
's greatest friends. In Barbauld's later years her friends included Samuel Rogers
, Madame D'Arblay
, Eliza Fletcher
(who first visited...
Friends, Associates
Anna Miller
ALM's literary ambitions and her self-publicizing
Whyman, Susan E. The Pen and the People: English Letter Writers 1660-1800. Oxford University Press.
192
made her respected in and around Bath but ridiculed and despised in London. Mme du Deffand
found both her and her husband ennuyeux.
Their initial friendship seems to have cooled slightly, but ALB
wrote Chapone's obituary, as well as that of a Chapone brother. She also met at about the same time Elizabeth Carter
, Sarah Scott
...
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...
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...
Friends, Associates
Elizabeth Montagu
EM
met Frances Burney
at Hester Thrale
's house, Streatham Park, near London.
Hemlow, Joyce. The History of Fanny Burney. Clarendon.
106-7
Friends, Associates
Lady Anne Barnard
LAB
's later social life in London is mentioned in the diary of Frances Burney
.
Graham, Henry Grey. Scottish Men of Letters in the Eighteenth Century. Adam and Charles Black.
345
Sir Walter Scott
renewed his early acquaintance with her after fifty years.
Friends, Associates
Cassandra, Lady Hawke
The young and very private Frances Burney
, at an entertainment where the singer Pacchierotti
was to perform, had an encounter with this terrible set
Burney, Frances. Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay. Editors Barrett, Charlotte and Austin Dobson, Macmillan.
The leading figures in the movement were Montagu herself (who spent freely in hospitality, and who was later dubbed the Queen of the Bluestockings or Queen of the Blues) and Carter
(the most intellectually...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Lee
HL
, like her sister, was personally friendly with many other writers of her day: Jane
and Anna Maria Porter
, Ann Radcliffe
(even though the latter probably did not, as often reported, attend the...
Friends, Associates
Germaine de Staël
One of her associates in her English visit was the future husband
of Frances Burney
. Burney thought her a woman of the first abilities, very much in the style of Mrs Thrale but with...
Friends, Associates
Hannah More
Here she began to gather the circle of friends which by the end of her long life had touched every cranny of English society. She had already met Edmund Burke
in Bristol the previous September...
Timeline
May 1992: The Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century British...
Parker, Pamela Corpron. “A Conference of Our Own: on the 20th Anniversary of the BWWA”. The Female Spectator, Vol.
16
, No. 1, p. 6.
6
November 2003: A painting by John Hoppner entitled Portrait...
Women writers item
November 2003
A painting by John Hoppner
entitled Portrait of a Lady as Evelina (Frances Burney
's earliest heroine, born in January 1778) sold at Sotheby
's to an unnamed private buyer for £173,600.
6 May 2009: The antiquarian book collection of the late...
Women writers item
6 May 2009
The antiquarian book collection of the late Paula Fentress Peyraud
(the largest in private hands), auctioned in New York, fetched more than $1.5 million US. Books by women between 1760 and 1830 predominated.