Apedia

Burney Father Wrote Writing Evelina Comedy Social World

Front Fanny Burney
Back 1752-1840
novelist and woman of letter
her father was part of Samuel Johnson 's circle
her first novel Evelina 1778 made her famous
her second Cecilia 1782 confirmed her reputation
her third Camelia 1796
her last the Wanderer 1812
she inherited the form from Richardson and Fielding and handled it in a way that proved useful to Jane Austin
her strength lay in comedy and the comedy of domestic life, developed around innocent heroine like Evelina as they enter a sophisticated social world
to read miss Burney, wrote Walter Allen, is rather like having a mouse's view of the world of cats : the cats are very terrifying, but the mouse's sense of the ridiculous could not be keener'.

Frances Burney (13 June 1752 – 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and after her marriage as Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King's Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to the musician and music historian Dr Charles Burney (1726–1814) and his first wife, Esther Sleepe Burney (1725–1762). The third of her mother's six children, she was self-educated and began writing what she called her "scribblings" at the age of ten.

Quick facts: Born, Died …

In 1786–1790 she was an unusual appointment as a courtier, becoming "Keeper of the Robes" to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre D'Arblay. Their only son, Alexander, was born in 1794. After a lengthy writing career, and travels, during which she was stranded in France by warfare for more than ten years, she settled in Bath, England, where she died on 6 January 1840.

Burney wrote four novels, of which the first, Evelina (1778), was the most successful, and remains the most highly regarded. She also wrote several plays, most never given public performances in her lifetime, a memoir of her father (1832), and left large quantities of letters and journals, which have been gradually published since 1889.

Overview of career

Frances Burney was a novelist, diarist and playwright. In all, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography and twenty-five volumes of journals and letters. She has gained critical respect in her own right, but she also foreshadowed such novelists of manners with a satirical bent as Jane Austen and Thackeray.

She published her first novel, Evelina, anonymously in 1778. During that period, novel reading was frowned upon as something young women of a certain social status should not do, while novel writing was out of the question. Burney feared that her father would discover what she called her "scribblings". When she published Evelina anonymously, she only told her siblings and two trusted aunts. Eventually her father read the novel and guessed that Burney was its author. News of her identity spread. It brought Burney almost immediate fame with its unique narrative and comic strengths. She followed it with Cecilia in 1782, Camilla in 1796 and The Wanderer in 1814.

Learn with these flashcards. Click next, previous, or up to navigate to more flashcards for this subject.

Next card: Burning babe poem poet robert southwell's printed feels

Previous card: Burlesque high low mockery specific theme style kind

Up to card list: Wordsworth companion to literature by Bahman Moradi