Fanny Burney (1752-1840)
Frances Burney was an important English novelist, diarist, and playwright from the 18th and early 19th centuries. Those who were close to her knew her informally as Fanny Burney and after her marriage she began to go by the name Madame d'Arblay.
Burney was born on June 13th, 1752 to Dr. Charles Burney (who was a musical historian by profession) and Mrs. Esther Sleepe Burney in King's Lynn in England.
Frances Burney was largely self-educated and had an early start in her writing career beginning with her rudimentary "scribblings" as she herself called it, from the age of ten. These efforts belied her earlier difficulty with the English language when she had not even learned the alphabet by age eight. Some historians and literary scholars today believe that Burney may have suffered some form of dyslexia.
It was these learning difficulties that made Burney somewhat neglected by her father who openly showed favouritism towards Frances' sisters Esther and Susanna. Charles Burney obviously considered these two other daughters as physically and intellectually superior to Frances and he sent them to Paris to pursue further education, while Frances herself stayed at home and endeavoured to educate herself through the perusal of the family's extensive collection of books and reading materials.
This collection was comprised of several novels, plays, histories, sermons, poetry, and courtesy books among them Lives by Plutarch and even some of William Shakespeare's works. Burney drew on this staggering wealth of reading material, as well as her own personal journals, when she began to tackle the task of writing her first novels.
Looking back at Burney's later accomplishments and her earliest efforts at self-study and education it is remarkable that a child through sheer ambition and hard work overcame what should have been a formidable learning obstacle. Of course an integral factor in Burney's subsequent literary growth was her close relationship with Samuel Crisp.
It was Crisp who continually encouraged Burney to pursue her writing through the use of journalistic letters, which she sent to him on a regular basis. Many of these letters contained details of Burney's personal life with regards to her family and friends as well as her social circle in London. Burney finally met face to face with her benefactor when she made her first formal visit to Crisp in 1766 at Chessington Hall in Surrey, England.
Throughout her life, Frances Burney maintained a set of journal diaries, which were primarily designed to be a means to correspond with her family and friends although she would draw on these journals later as subject matters for her novels. Her first novel in particular, Evelina, drew heavily from her earliest manuscripts. The very first recorded entry that she ever made in these journals was on May 30 of 1768 and she continued with this practice for over seventy-two years!
Frances Burney was often conflicted with regards to her writing and as a result she would often go back to her earlier entries in her diaries and edit them drastically.
Frances Burney died on January 6th, 1840 and her body was laid to rest in Walcot Cemetery in Bath.
Original Authors: Doods Pangburn
Edit Update Authors: M.A.Harris
Updated On: 21/07/2008
