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.
The tone of the work is conservative, leavened with an intelligent concern for development of independent thinking. Topics of various letters include Conduct and Conversation, Forbearance, Chastity, Truth, Employment of Time...
Textual Features
Mary Ann Kelty
At the end of the first volume Mortimer twice proposes to Eliza: once face to face and unpremeditatedly, then by letter. She does not accept him. By the end of the next volume he is...
Textual Features
Charlotte Smith
CS
regularly, however, interspersed in her novels specimens of the poetry on which she prided herself more. Her fiction mixes pathos and satire. She may depict mountains and castles, but draws on her own life...
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...
Textual Production
Cassandra Cooke
As well as writings by CC
now among the Beachcroft family private archive (at the Bodleian Library
) and the Stoneleigh papers (at the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
, Stratford-upon-Avon), the letters whose backs Frances Burney
Textual Production
Hester Lynch Piozzi
HLP
was a voluminous letter-writer all her life. Though scholarly estimates differ, there is no doubt that thousands of her letters survive. The first selection appeared in print in 1833. Many early editions, however, had...
Textual Production
Cassandra, Lady Hawke
By early 1782, when she met with Frances Burney
, CLH
had written or drafted two novels. According to her sister, Lady Saye and Sele
(who was keen that Burney should read them both), one...
Textual Production
Elizabeth Montagu
A TLS review by R. W. Chapman
sounded distinctly anti-feminist. He wrote that by employing heroic remedies, the indomitable editor has cut away all the elaborate openings and studied conclusions, masses of domestic detail, nine-tenths...
Textual Production
Sarah Harriet Burney
Colburn originally wanted to publish two volumes of tales together; then he agreed to publish The Shipwreck immediately if a second volume could be ready soon after Christmas 1815. He had advertised volume one on...
Textual Production
Cassandra, Lady Hawke
Lady Saye and Sele
told Burney
that one of the unpublished novels by her sister is in letters, like yours. . . it's called the 'Mausoleum of Julia'!
Burney, Frances. Diary and Letters of Madame d’Arblay. Editors Barrett, Charlotte and Austin Dobson, Macmillan.
Of about a dozen other books in the series, this work was the only one written by a woman about a woman writer. Royds situates Barrett Browning within a strong tradition of women writers including...
Textual Production
Anna Maria Bennett
This was again anonymous; some thought it by Frances Burney
. AMB
dedicated it to another of George III
's children, Prince William Henry
(a naval officer who would be in a position to offer...
Textual Production
Hannah More
Like Frances Burney
's Brief Reflections Relative to the Emigrant French Clergy, this was written for the benefit of Frances Anne Crewe
's fund for relief of French clerical refugees. More expressed the hope...
Butler, Lady Eleanor et al. “Foreword and Editorial Materials”. The Hamwood Papers of the Ladies of Llangollen and Caroline Hamilton, edited by Eva Mary Bell, Macmillan, p. vii - viii; various pages.
EM
published, with her name, "There is a Secret, Find It Out!", a novel which quotes Griffith (probably Elizabeth Griffith
) on its title-page and borrows a character name from her stepsister Frances
's Evelina.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
