Frances Burney

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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 foreshadowed such novelists of manners with a satirical bent as Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray.

She published her first novel, Evelina, anonymously in 1778. Burney feared that her father would find what she called her "scribblings", so she only told her siblings and two trusted aunts about the work. Her closest sister, Susanna, helped with the cover-up. Eventually, her father read the novel and guessed that she was its author. News of her identity spread. The novel 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.

All Burney's novels explore the lives of English aristocrats and satirise their social pretensions and personal foibles, with an eye to larger questions such as the politics of female identity. With one exception, Burney never succeeded in having her plays performed, largely due to objections from her father, who thought that publicity from such an effort would be damaging to her reputation. The exception was Edwy and Elgiva, which was not well received by the public and closed after the first night's performance despite having Sarah Siddons in the cast.

Although her novels were hugely popular during her lifetime, Burney's reputation as a writer of fiction suffered after her death at the hands of biographers and critics, who felt that the extensive diaries, published posthumously in 1842–1846, offer a more interesting and accurate portrait of 18th-century life. Today, critics are returning to her novels and plays with renewed interest in her outlook on the social lives and struggles of women in a predominantly male-oriented culture. Scholars continue to value Burney's diaries as well, for their candid depictions of English society.

Throughout her writing career, Burney's talent for satirical caricature was widely acknowledged: figures such as Dr Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke, Hester Lynch Thrale, David Garrick and other members of the Blue Stockings Society to which she aligned herself were among her admirers. Her early novels were read and enjoyed by Jane Austen, whose own title Pride and Prejudice derives from the final pages of Cecilia. Thackeray is said to have drawn on the first-person account of the Battle of Waterloo recorded in her diaries while writing his Vanity Fair.

Burney's early career was strongly affected by her relations with her father and the critical attentions of a family friend, Samuel Crisp. Both encouraged her writing, but used their influence to dissuade her from publishing or performing her dramatic comedies, as they saw the genre as inappropriate for a lady. Many feminist critics see her as an author whose natural talent for satire was stifled by the social pressures on female authors. Burney persisted despite the setbacks. When her comedies were poorly received, she returned to novel writing, and later tried her hand at tragedy. She supported both herself and her family on the proceeds of her later novels, Camilla and The Wanderer.

Family life

Burney was born in Lynn Regis, now King's Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to the musician Dr Charles Burney (1726–1814) and his first wife, Esther Sleepe Burney (1725–1762), as the third of her mother's six children. Her elder siblings were Esther (Hetty, 1749–1832) and James (1750–1821); those younger were Susanna Elizabeth (1755–1800), Charles (1757–1817) and Charlotte Ann (1761–1838). Of her brothers, James became an admiral and sailed with Captain James Cook on his second and third voyages. The younger Charles Burney became a well-known classical scholar, after whom The Burney Collection of Newspapers is named.

Her younger sister Susanna married, in 1781, Molesworth Phillips, an officer in the Royal Marines who had sailed in Captain Cook's last expedition; she left a journal that gives a principal eye-witness account of the Gordon Riots. Her younger half-sister Sarah Harriet Burney (1772–1844) also became a novelist, publishing seven works of fiction. Esther Sleepe Burney also bore two other boys, both named Charles, who died in infancy in 1752 and 1754.

Frances Burney began composing small letters and stories almost as soon as she learnt the alphabet. She often joined with her brothers and sisters in writing and acting in plays. The Burney family had many close friends. "Daddy Crisp" was almost like a second father to Frances and a strong influence on her early writing years. Burney scholar Margaret Anne Doody has investigated conflicts within the Burney family that affected Burney's writing and her personal life. She alleged that one strain was an incestuous relationship between Burney's brother James and their half-sister Sarah in 1798–1803, but there is no direct evidence for this, and Burney was affectionate towards Sarah and provided her with financial assistance in later life.

Frances Burney's mother, Esther Sleepe, described by historians as a woman of "warmth and intelligence", was the daughter of a French refugee named Dubois and had been brought up a Catholic. This French heritage influenced Frances Burney's self-perception in later life, possibly contributing to her attraction and subsequent marriage to Alexandre d'Arblay. Esther Burney died in 1762 when Frances was ten years old.

Frances's father, Charles Burney, was noted for his personal charm, and for his talents as a musician, a musicologist, a composer and a man of letters. In 1760 he moved his family to London, a decision that improved their access to English high society and social standing. They lived amidst an artist social circle that gathered round Charles at their home in Poland Street, Soho.

In 1767, Charles Burney eloped to marry for a second time, to Elizabeth Allen, the wealthy widow of a King's Lynn wine merchant. Allen had three children of her own, and several years after the marriage the two families merged. This new domestic situation was fraught with tension. The Burney children found their new stepmother overbearing and quick to anger, and they made fun of her behind her back. However, their collective unhappiness may have also brought them closer to one another. In 1774 the family moved again, to what had been the house of Isaac Newton in St Martin's Street, Westminster.

The royal court

In 1775 Burney turned down a marriage proposal from one Thomas Barlow, a man whom she had met only once. Her side of the Barlow courtship is amusingly told in her journal. During 1782–1785 she enjoyed the rewards of her successes as a novelist; she was received at fashionable literary gatherings throughout London. In 1781 Samuel Crisp died. In 1784 Dr Johnson died, and that year also brought her failure in a romance with a clergyman, George Owen Cambridge. She was 33 years old.

In 1785, an association with Mary Granville Delany, a woman known in both literary and royal circles, allowed Burney to travel to the court of King George III and Queen Charlotte, where the Queen offered her the post of "Keeper of the Robes", with a salary of £200 per annum. Burney hesitated to accept, not wishing to be separated from her family, and especially resistant to employment that would restrict free use of her time in writing. However, unmarried at 34, she felt pressure to accept and thought that improved social status and income might allow her greater freedom to write. Having accepted the post in 1786, she developed a warm relationship with the queen and princesses that lasted into her later years, yet her doubts proved accurate: the position exhausted her and left her little time for writing. Her sorrow was intensified by poor relations with her colleague Juliane Elisabeth von Schwellenburg, co-Keeper of the Robes, who has been described as "a peevish old person of uncertain temper and impaired health, swaddled in the buckram of backstairs etiquette."

Burney's continued to write journals during her years in the court. To her friends and to her sister Susanna, she recounted her life in court, along with major political events, including the public trial of Warren Hastings for "official misconduct in India". She recorded the speeches of Edmund Burke at the trial.

Burney was courted by an official of the royal household, Colonel Stephen Digby, but he eventually married another woman of greater wealth. The disappointment, combined with the other frustrations of office, may have contributed to her health failing at this time. In 1790 she prevailed on her father (whose own career had taken a new turn when he was appointed organist at Chelsea Hospital in 1783) to request that she be released from the post, which she was. She returned to her father's house in Chelsea, but continued to receive a yearly pension of £100. She kept up a friendship with the royal family and received letters from the princesses from 1818 until 1840.

Marriage

In 1790–1791 Burney wrote four blank-verse tragedies: Hubert de Vere, The Siege of Pevensey, Elberta and Edwy and Elgiva, only the last of which was performed. One of a profusion of paintings and literary works about the early English king Eadwig (Edwy) and his wife Ælfgifu (Elgiva) to appear in the later 18th century, it met with public failure, playing in London for one night in March.

When the French Revolution began in 1789, Burney was among the many literary figures in England who sympathized with its early ideals of equality and social justice. During this period Burney became acquainted with some French exiles known as "Constitutionalists", who fled to England in August 1791 and were living at Juniper Hall, near Mickleham, Surrey, where Burney's sister Susanna lived. She quickly became close to General Alexandre d'Arblay (1754-1818), an artillery officer who had been adjutant-general to Lafayette. D'Arblay taught her French and introduced her to the writer Germaine de Staël.

Burney's father disapproved of d'Arblay's poverty, Catholicism, and ambiguous social status as an émigré. Nonetheless, she and d'Arblay were married on 28 July 1793 at St Michaels and All Angels Church in Mickleham. The same year she produced her pamphlet Brief Reflections relative to the Emigrant French Clergy. This short work resembled other pamphlets produced by French sympathisers in England, calling for financial support for the revolutionary cause. It is noteworthy for the way that Burney employed her rhetorical skills in the name of tolerance and human compassion. On 18 December 1794, Burney gave birth to a son, Alexander Charles Louis (died 19 January 1837), who took holy orders and became minister of Ely Chapel, London, and perpetual curate of Camden Town Chapel. Her sister Charlotte's remarriage in 1798 to the pamphleteer Ralph Broome caused her and her father further consternation, as did the move by her sister Susanna and penurious brother-in-law Molesworth Phillips and their family to Ireland in 1796.

Life in France: revolution and mastectomy

In 1801 d'Arblay was offered service with the government of Napoleon Bonaparte in France, and in 1802 Burney and her son followed him to Paris, where they expected to remain for a year. The outbreak of war between France and England overtook their visit and they remained there in exile for ten years. Although isolated from her family while in France, Burney was supportive of her husband's decision to move to Passy, outside Paris.

In August 1810 Burney developed pains in her breast, which her husband suspected could be due to breast cancer. Through her royal network, she was eventually treated by several leading physicians, and a year later, on 30 September 1811, underwent a mastectomy performed by "7 men in black, Dr. Larrey, M. Dubois, Dr. Moreau, Dr. Aumont, Dr. Ribe, & a pupil of Dr. Larrey, & another of M. Dubois". The operation was performed like a battlefield operation under the command of M. Dubois, then accoucheur (midwife or obstetrician) to the Empress Marie Louise and considered the best doctor in France. Burney later described the operation in detail, since she was conscious through most of it, as it took place before the development of anesthetics.

I mounted, therefore, unbidden, the Bed stead – & M. Dubois placed me upon the Mattress, & spread a cambric handkerchief upon my face. It was transparent, however, & I saw, through it, that the Bed stead was instantly surrounded by the 7 men & my nurse. I refused to be held; but when, Bright through the cambric, I saw the glitter of polished Steel – I closed my Eyes. I would not trust to convulsive fear the sight of the terrible incision. Yet – when the dreadful steel was plunged into the breast – cutting through veins – arteries – flesh – nerves – I needed no injunctions not to restrain my cries. I began a scream that lasted unintermittingly during the whole time of the incision – & I almost marvel that it rings not in my Ears still? so excruciating was the agony. When the wound was made, & the instrument was withdrawn, the pain seemed undiminished, for the air that suddenly rushed into those delicate parts felt like a mass of minute but sharp & forked poniards, that were tearing the edges of the wound. I concluded the operation was over – Oh no! presently the terrible cutting was renewed – & worse than ever, to separate the bottom, the foundation of this dreadful gland from the parts to which it adhered – Again all description would be baffled – yet again all was not over, – Dr. Larry rested but his own hand, & – Oh heaven! – I then felt the knife (rack)ling against the breast bone – scraping it!

Burney sent her account of this experience months later to her sister Esther without rereading it. It is impossible to know today whether the breast removed was indeed cancerous. She survived, and returned to England with her son in 1812 to visit her ailing father and to avoid her son's conscription into the French army. Charles Burney died in 1814, and she returned to France later that year after the Treaty of Paris had been concluded, to be with her husband.

In 1815 Napoleon escaped from Elba, and returned to power in France. D'Arblay, who was serving with the King's Guard, remained loyal to King Louis XVIII and became involved in the military actions that followed. Burney fled to Belgium. When her husband was wounded she joined him at Trèves (Trier) and together they returned to Bath in England, to live at 23 Great Stanhope Street. Burney wrote an account of this experience and of her Paris years in her Waterloo Journal of 1818–1832. D'Arblay was promoted to lieutenant-general, but died shortly afterwards of cancer, in 1818.

Plaques and other memorials

In addition to the gravestone erected in the churchyard of St Swithin, Bath, other memorials and plaques record Burney's life.

A plaque on the wall at 84 High Street, King's Lynn, shows where she and her father lived in the 1750s.

In 1780, two years after the publication of Evelina, she stayed at 14 South Parade, Bath, with Mr and Mrs Thrale, who were great friends of Dr Johnson. A plaque on the wall of the house records her visit.

At 78 West Street, Brighton, Sussex a blue plaque records her visits to the Thrales' home there.

At Windsor Castle Wall, St Alban's Street, Windsor, a plaque records the residence of Mary Delaney between 1785 and 1788, where she was frequently visited by Burney.

A blue plaque on a wall in Chapel Lane, Westhumble, Surrey records the d'Arblays' life there in their cottage, 'Camilla', which they built and in which they lived between 1797 and 1801.

At St Margaret's Vicarage, St Margaret's Place, King's Lynn a blue plaque records Burney's regular visits there, where she observed the social life of Lynn.

Elizabeth Goudge's four-act play, "Fanny Burney" (in Three Plays: Suomi, The Brontës of Haworth, Fanny Burney: Gerald Duckworth, London, 1939) has scenes from the life of Frances Burney from 1768 to 1840. Under the title "Joy Will Come Back", the play was performed in London, in the Arts Theatre in 1937. Under the published title, "Fanny Burney", it was performed at Oldham, Lancashire, in 1949.

A Royal Society of Arts brown plaque records her period of residence at 11 Bolton Street, Mayfair.

On 13 June 2002 the Burney Society of North America and the Burney Society UK unveiled a memorial panel in the new Poets' Corner window in Westminster Abbey in memory of Frances Burney.

In 2013, a marble plaque was unveiled in the gallery of St Swithin's Church, Bath, to record Burney's life. This replaces two original plaques—one to her and one to her half-sister Sarah Harriet—that were lost. In 1958, the St Swithin's church authorities had sought to protect the plaques by removing them during renovations to the church organ, but they later disappeared.

Frances Burney

Frances Burney

Article

Notable quotes

Related journals

Live room · 1 here

Related journals

Notable quotes

Article

Overview of career

Family life

Education

Journal-diaries and Caroline Evelyn

Evelina

Critical reception

Hester Thrale and Streatham

The Witlings

Cecilia

The royal court

The court plays

Marriage

Camilla

Comedies

Life in France: revolution and mastectomy

The Wanderer and Memoirs of Dr Burney

Later life

Plaques and other memorials

List of works

Novels

Non-fiction

Posthumously published journals and letters

Plays

About Frances Burney

About Frances Burney

Article

Notable quotes

Related journals

Live room · 1 here

Related journals

Notable quotes

Article

Overview of career

Family life

Education

Journal-diaries and Caroline Evelyn

Evelina

Critical reception

Hester Thrale and Streatham

The Witlings

Cecilia

The royal court

The court plays

Marriage

Camilla

Comedies

Life in France: revolution and mastectomy

The Wanderer and Memoirs of Dr Burney

Later life

Plaques and other memorials

List of works

Novels

Non-fiction

Posthumously published journals and letters

Plays