Madame D'Arblay
| Frances Burney | |
|---|---|
_by_Edward_Francisco_Burney.jpg)
Portrait by her relative Edward Francis Burney
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| Born |
13 June 1752 Lynn Regis, England |
| Died | 6 January 1840 (aged 87) Bath, England |
| Notable works |
Journals (1768–1840) |
Journals (1768–1840)
Evelina (1778)
Cecilia (1782)
Camilla (1796)
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 six children, she was self-educated and began writing what she called her "scribblings" at the age of ten. 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.
Frances Burney was a novelist, diarist and playwright. In all, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography and twenty 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 this period, novel reading was frowned upon as something that young women of a certain social status should not do. Novel writing then, was out of the question. Burney feared that her father, Dr Burney, would discover what she called her "scribbling". Because of this, when Burney published Evelina anonymously, she only told her siblings and two trusted aunts. Shortly after the book's publication, it seemed that everyone was reading and discussing it. Eventually, her father read the novel and guessed that Burney was the author. Hence news spread. When the book's authorship came to light, 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. 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 unfortunately was not well received by the public and closed after the first night's performance.
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