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Biography of Fanny BurneyName: Fanny BurneyBirth Date: 1752 Death Date: 1840 Place of Birth: N/A Nationality: English Gender: Female Occupations: novelist, diarist Fanny Burney The English novelist and diarist Fanny Burney (1752-1840) was one of the most popular novelists of the late 18th century. She was also an important chronicler of English manners, morals, and society.Fanny Burney, originally named Frances, was the daughter of Dr. Charles Burney, the distinguished historian of music. She captured London's literary society with the publication of Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, the best of her four extant novels. Although she had begun to compose Evelina as early as 1767, she did not publish it until 1778, and then only anonymously. The heroine's search for a father and a husband exposes both the vanity and affectation of life among the upper class and the vulgarity and lack of feeling which she associates with low life. An effective novel told in letters, it displays Burney's wit, knowledge of English society, technical versatility, sentiment, interest in contemporary …showed first 150 words…
…showed last 150 words…published three volumes of the Memoirs of Dr. Burney, a project begun in 1814. Seven volumes of The Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay, published between 1842 and 1846, and two volumes of The Early Diary of Francis Burney, not published until 1907, reveal her pert and astute observations about fashionable life in Georgian England. Further Reading The authoritative biographical study of Fanny Burney is Joyce Hemlow, The History of Fanny Burney (1958). A detailed and accessible biography is Fanny Burney: A Biography by Claire Harman (2001). Her major works are discussed in J. M. S. Tompkins, The Popular Novel in England, 1770-1800 (1932); Lionel Stevenson, The English Novel: A Panorama (1960); and Ronald Paulson, Satire and the Novel in Eighteenth Century England (1967). Recommended for general background reading are J. H. Plumb, England in the Eighteenth Century (1951); A. R. Humphreys, The Augustan World: Life and Letters in Eighteenth Century England (1954); and lan P. Watt, The Rise of the Novel (1957). |