Frances Burney Biography Quotes 8 Report mistakes

Early Life and Family
Frances Burney, later known as Madame dArblay, was born on 13 June 1752 in Kings Lynn, Norfolk, into a family that brought her early into the heart of English intellectual and musical life. Her father, Dr Charles Burney, was a prominent music historian and teacher whose home drew artists, scholars, and performers. Her mother, Esther Sleepe Burney, oversaw a large household of children and stepchildren, including the future naval officer James Burney, the scholar Charles Burney the younger, and the novelist half-sister Sarah Burney. Frances was not an early reader, but once she began, she read voraciously and taught herself by copying models of prose. From her teens she kept journals and letters addressed to a circle of intimates, notably the family friend and mentor Samuel Crisp, whose counsel and criticism mattered to her as much as any formal education.

First Success: Evelina
Burney wrote steadily and in private until the sudden success of Evelina, or, the History of a Young Ladys Entrance into the World (1778), published anonymously. The novels wit, social observation, and moral intelligence captured London. When her authorship became known, it brought her into the orbit of some of the most prominent figures of the day. Samuel Johnson praised her originality and vivacity; Edmund Burke admired the novels insight; Sir Joshua Reynolds welcomed her in company; and Hester Thrale, later Hester Piozzi, made her a frequent guest at Streatham. James Boswell encountered her in this circle as well. The warmth of that reception, together with Evelinas brisk sales, established Burney as a leading novelist of manners at a time when the form was rapidly evolving.

Expanding Reputation: Cecilia and the Literary Circle
Cecilia (1782) deepened her reputation, offering a broader, more ambitious study of character and society. The book was widely read, and later readers noticed a phrase within it that gave a title to another writers work: pride and prejudice. Yet the acclaim brought pressures. Her father and Samuel Crisp, protective of her standing, prevailed upon her to suppress The Witlings, a satirical play that might have offended members of the bluestocking world, including patrons such as Elizabeth Montagu. Their caution, born of affection and prudence, nevertheless frustrated Burneys dramatic hopes and showed the constraints surrounding a woman of letters navigating friendship, patronage, and public taste.

At Court: Service to Queen Charlotte
In 1786 Burney accepted appointment as Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte. The post, in the household of King George III and Queen Charlotte, offered stability and prestige as well as a vantage onto the rituals of monarchy. It also imposed strict routines and curtailed her writing time. Her journals from these years are invaluable records of court life and of the Kings illness, and they reveal the loyalty and tact with which she managed duties, friendships, and her own health. After five years she resigned, with the Queens regard intact and her sense of artistic purpose renewed.

Marriage, Family, and Camilla
In 1793 she married Alexandre dArblay, a French emigre officer who had fled the Revolution. The match initially worried Dr Charles Burney, but affection prevailed, and reconciliation followed. Their only child, Alexander, was born the following year. Burney returned to fiction with Camilla (1796), a widely anticipated novel whose success helped the family build a modest home in Surrey, popularly known as Camilla Cottage. Friends from her earlier circle, including Johnsons acquaintances and members of the artistic world, continued to value her company; her correspondence kept alive ties to Hester Piozzi and others even as domestic life and motherhood claimed much of her attention.

On the Stage and Its Perils
Burney never gave up on drama. Edwy and Elgiva reached the stage in 1795 but was withdrawn after a disastrous first night. The episode testified to the hazards of the theatre and the difficulty of transferring her nuanced social observation to a different medium under the glare of public performance. Nonetheless, she kept writing plays, even when prudence or family counsel kept them from the stage.

France, War, and Private Ordeal
In 1802, during the brief Peace of Amiens, the dArblays traveled to France to visit family. When war resumed, they were unable to return at once to England. Alexandre sought to rebuild a career in a country in turmoil, while Frances maintained her diary and letters and educated their son. In 1811 she underwent a brutal mastectomy performed without anesthesia, an event she later described in a long, composed letter to her family. That account remains one of the most extraordinary documents of medical and personal endurance of the period. The family returned to England in 1812, reshaping their lives between old friendships and new practicalities.

Late Works and Editorial Labors
Burneys final published novel, The Wanderer (1814), drew upon the dislocations of the revolutionary era and the precarious position of women seeking livelihood and identity. In the following years she devoted much energy to family matters and to preserving memory. After Dr Charles Burneys death, she prepared Memoirs of Dr. Burney (1832), drawing on a lifetime of letters and journals to honor her fathers achievements and the cultural world that had shaped them both. The work, like her diaries, combined affectionate portraiture with sharp observation, and it stirred debate among contemporaries who recognized familiar figures, including Hester Piozzi and Samuel Johnson, in her pages.

Style, Influence, and Reputation
Burneys fiction blends comedy with moral scrutiny, following young women as they learn to read the social codes of rank and money, often at personal risk. Her scenes of awkward introduction, bustling assemblies, and whispered calculation influenced later novelists. Jane Austen admired her balance of satire and feeling; novelists such as Maria Edgeworth and, later, William Makepeace Thackeray found in her an early model of the novel of manners. Her diaries and letters, addressed over decades to sisters like Susanna and Sarah, to Samuel Crisp, and to intimate friends from the Johnsonian and Streatham circles, form a continuous social chronicle linking private experience to public life.

Final Years and Legacy
Burney lived to see the reading public change and expand, and she remained a respected figure as the generation of Johnson and Reynolds gave way to the age of Scott and beyond. She died in 1840, at eighty-seven, her long life encompassing Georgian, revolutionary, and early Victorian transformations. Today she is remembered both for the freshness of Evelina and Cecilia and for the unmatched documentary record of her journals. Through the famous evenings with Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale, the cautious advice of Samuel Crisp and Dr Charles Burney, the trials of the theatre, the discipline of royal service, the ordeal of surgery, and the ordinary consolations of marriage and motherhood with Alexandre dArblay, she fashioned a body of work that still speaks with intelligence, humor, and courage about how a woman comes of age in a crowded world.

Our collection contains 8 quotes who is written by Frances, under the main topics: Wisdom - Writing - Honesty & Integrity - Aging - Contentment.