Fanny Burney
byname of Frances d’Arblay, née
Burney
born June 13, 1752, King’s Lynn, Norfolk,
England
died January 6, 1840, London
English novelist and letter writer, daughter
of the musician Charles Burney, and author of
Evelina, a landmark in the development of the
novel of manners.
Fanny educated herself by omnivorous reading
at home. Her literary apprenticeship was much
influenced by her father’s friend Samuel Crisp,
a disappointed author living in retirement. It
was to “Daddy” Crisp that she addressed her
first journal letters, lively accounts of the
musical evenings at the Burneys’ London house
where the elite among European performers
entertained informally for gatherings that might
include David Garrick, Dr. Johnson, Edmund
Burke, and Richard Sheridan. Considered the
least promising of the clever Burney children,
Fanny moved unnoticed in the circles of the
great, confiding her observations to Crisp.
Her practice of observing and recording
society led eventually to her novel Evelina, or
The History of a Young Lady’s Entrance into the
World. Evelina revealed its author to be a keen
social commentator with an attentive ear for
dialect and the differentiation of London
speech. It concerns the development of a young
girl, unsure of herself in society and subject
to errors of manners and judgment. The plot
terminates with Evelina’s marriage after the
mistakes stemming from her untutored girlhood
have been surmounted. A novel treating
contemporary manners in an elegant and decorous
way and depending for the development of its
plot upon the erring and uncertain conduct of
the heroine was an innovation that pointed the
way for the novels of Jane Austen. Published
anonymously in 1778, Evelina took London by
storm. No one guessed it was by shy Fanny
Burney, then 26.
When the secret was out, Burney’s debut into
literary society was launched by the fashionable
hostess Mrs. Thrale. Once the young woman
overcame her shyness she could match wits with
Dr. Johnson himself, who was very kind to her
between 1779 and 1783 when they both made long
visits to the Thrales. Burney’s journals from
this period have been prized for their vignettes
of contemporary scenes and celebrities and for
Burney’s own secretly expressed delight in being
famous.
Her next novel, Cecilia, or Memoirs of an
Heiress, 5 vol. (1782), incorporated morally
didactic themes along with the social satire of
Burney’s first novel into a more complex plot.
Though lacking the freshness and spontaneity of
Evelina, this novel was equally well received,
but Burney’s success was shadowed by the death
of Henry Thrale in 1781, of Crisp in 1783, and
of Dr. Johnson in 1784. These years also brought
a disappointment in love, when the ambiguous
attentions of a young clergyman came to nothing.
In 1785 Burney was presented to Queen
Charlotte and King George III and in 1786 was
invited to court as second keeper of the robes,
where she remained for five unhappy years.
Eventually her health suffered, and she was
allowed to resign in 1791. Her journals of the
period loyally repress court gossip of the years
of the king’s madness (1788–89) but contain
interesting accounts of public events like the
trial of Warren Hastings.
In 1793, when she was 41, Burney married
Alexandre d’Arblay, a former adjutant general to
Lafayette, then a penniless French émigré living
in England. They had one son. In 1796 she wrote
a potboiler, Camilla: or a Picture of Youth, and
on its proceeds the d’Arblays built a house in
Surrey, where they moved in 1797. While on a
visit to France with her husband and son in
1802, she was forced by the renewal of the
Napoleonic Wars to stay for 10 years. After
Waterloo (1815) the d’Arblays returned and
settled at Bath, where d’Arblay died in 1818.
Mme d’Arblay then retired to London, where she
devoted her attention to her son’s career and to
the publication of her father’s Memoirs (1832).
An edition of her journals and letters in eight
volumes was published 1972–80.
