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.
FB
was listed by the Monthly Review as one of the nine British Muses in April 1774. Anna Seward
in 1796 recorded her preference of the lively Brooke to Frances Burney
, of whom each...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
The Critical Review, reviewing this book, called CS
a sister-queen
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan.
141
of the novel with Frances Burney
. William Enfield
in the Monthly praised it warmly.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press.
Neither the Critical nor the Monthly reviewer (the latter of whom was Andrew Becket
) seems to have looked back at notices of The Gamesters, since both assumed that the author of this novel...
Literary responses
Charlotte Smith
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
Anna Letitia Barbauld
Frances Burney
thought this the best of all Barbauld's poems. Hannah More
wrote to thank ALB
for writing so well on a subject so near her, More's heart,
Paul, Lissa. The Children’s Book Business. Routledge.
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
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...
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...
Occupation
Caroline Herschel
Her brothers (William and Alexander) were away at the time delivering a ten-foot telescope to Hanover. Work was in progress on a forty-foot telescope, while the twenty-foot one was drawing crowds of visitors to Slough...
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...
