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.
"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.
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...
Occupation
Helen Maria Williams
HMW
achieved early success as a poet. George Hardinge
was trying in autumn 1786 to secure her a Court position similar to that of Frances Burney
. He did not succeed in this attempt.
Kennedy, Deborah. Helen Maria Williams and the Age of Revolution. Bucknell University Press, 2002.
33-4
Occupation
Catherine Hutton
As well as collecting illustrations of costume, CH
was an early collector of autographs. (She began both these collections at a young age, but presumably had to start again from scratch after her losses in...
Performance of text
Jane Porter
When the curtain rose Kean
(possibly drunk) appeared to have lost his memory, and his power of action.—The other Performers became disconcerted in their parts . . . the whole became a chaos of uproar...
politics
May Sinclair
It was an act of great courage for MS
to make herself so conspicuous. Cicely Hamilton
and Catherine Gasquoine Hartley
led the procession. Members of the WWSL each carried a goose quill and a bannerette...
Author summary
Samuel Johnson
Arriving in eighteenth-century London as one more young literary hopeful from the provinces, SJ
achieved such a name for himself as an arbiter of poetry, of morality (through his Rambler and other periodical essays and...
Publishing
Sarah Fielding
The preface sounds condescending today, yet it offers high literary praise. Henry brushed up his sister's grammar and replaced colloquial words and expressions with more formal ones. He also altered her punctuation, notably removing her...
Publishing
Cassandra Lady Hawke
It seems to have been a success, judging from a Dublin edition and a French translation the same year, and a German translation in 1789.
Garside, Peter et al., editors. The English Novel 1770-1829. Oxford University Press, 2000, 2 vols.
1: 439
Once the novel was published, CLHdesired permission...
Publishing
Vernon Lee
VL
originally asked to write the series's volume on Frances Burney
, but accepted the publisher's offer of fifty pounds to write the life of the Countess. Both her scholarly and her creative interest was...
Publishing
Elizabeth Meeke
Ducray-Duménil's novel was Jules; ou, Le toit paternel, Paris, 1806, and Cottin's much shorter tale was Elisabeth; ou, Les exilés de Sibérie, published on its own the same year. The Cottin tale (said...
Publishing
Jane Austen
James Stanier Clarke
, the prince's librarian, had issued a somewhat obliquely-worded invitation to dedicate a future work to the prince. Emma was duly dedicated to him, albeit succinctly. Austen requested her new publisher, John Murray
Reception
Caroline Herschel
In the beginning CH
's reputation was usually judged more as that of a woman and a sister than as that of a scientist. Frances Burney
's admiration and delight was directed at her as...
Reception
Beatrix Potter
She sometimes wrote of her own drawing and painting as an obsession: Why cannot one be content to look at it? I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result. But also, watching and...
Reception
Elizabeth Hervey
It has been until recently a given of literary history that William Beckford
had his half-sister in his sights in his two burlesques on women's novel-writing. The title-page of the first quotes Pope
, thus...