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.
"Frances Burney" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/Frances_d%27Arblay_%28%27Fanny_Burney%27%29_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpg/840px-Frances_d%27Arblay_%28%27Fanny_Burney%27%29_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpg.
The Critical Reviewread this pleasing and interesting story as an imitation of Burney
's Cecilia.If there is a fault, it suggested, it was the structural fault of raising and solving one difficulty...
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, 1997.
81
The review in the Analytical, probably Wollstonecraft
's, offered strong endorsement. AR
's uncommon talent for gothic, it said, had...
Literary responses
Elizabeth Bonhote
The Critical Review placed this novel in the middle of the first rank of fiction, calling it very interesting and pleasing
qtd. in
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 468
although too much like Burney
's Cecilia. Andrew Becket
in the Monthly agreed.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 468
Literary responses
Ellis Cornelia Knight
Dinarbas was popular during ECK
's lifetime. It warranted fairly favourable mention from Frances Burney
, who wrote to a friend that if you could overlook the presumption of the idea of writing a continuation...
Literary responses
Anna Maria Mackenzie
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
Jane Austen
Some Austen news items are regrettable. In an interview with the Royal Geographical Society
in June 2011, V.S. Naipaul
, in asserting his own superiority to women writers (and claiming he could tell male from...
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
Charlotte Smith
The Critical Review, reviewing this book, called CS
a sister-queen
qtd. in
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan, 1998.
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, 2000, 2 vols.
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
Frances Brooke
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
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, 2011.
CLH
's immediate family were warm in their admiration. Frances Burney
, who read Julia de Gramont when it was passed to her by the queen, found it all of a piece—all love, love, love...
Literary responses
Stéphanie-Félicité de Genlis
Hester Lynch Piozzi
evidently felt later that these stories were very strong meat for children. She commented in a letter, I think a great Change has been made in Taste of popular Literature—or rather popular...
Occupation
John Wilson Croker
JWC
became a lawyer, (moving from Ireland to London after the Act of Union) a Tory
MP, an editor of several eighteenth-century texts (including letters by Lady Hervey
and by Henrietta Howard, Lady Suffolk
)...
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...
