FRANCES ("FANNY") BURNEY

Frances ("Fanny") Burney(1752 – 1840) was born to musical historian Dr Charles Burney and Esther Sleepe Burney. The third of six children, she was self-educated, and began writing what she called her “scribblings” at the age of ten. In 1793, at the age of 42, she married a French exile, General Alexandre D'Arblay. After a lengthy writing career, and travels that took her to France for over ten years, she settled in Bath where she died in January 1840.

Frances Burney was a novelist, diarist, and playwright. In total, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography, and twenty volumes of journals and letters. In addition to the critical respect she receives for her own writing, she is recognised as a literary precursor to prominent authors who came after her, including Jane Austen. She published her first novel Evelina anonymously in 1778, without her father’s knowledge or permission. When its authorship was revealed, it brought her almost immediate fame. All Burney’s novels explore the lives of English aristocrats, and satirise their social pretensions and personal foibles.

In 1780, two years after the publication of Evelina, she stayed at 14 South Parade, and she later retired to Bath, where she died at the age of 87. She was buried at Walcot Church. She once wrote to a friend: “I wish to live in Bath … or nowhere in England. Bath is … the only place for us since here, all the year round, there is always the town at command and always the country for prospect, exercise and delight.”