Fanny Burney
A biography (Text Only)
-
- $9.99
-
- $9.99
Publisher Description
‘Dazzling…full of special delights. Harman excels in the vivid presentation of scenes, the selection of detail…[a] marvellous and beautifully written book.’ Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday
At the age of fifteen, Fanny Burney made a bonfire of all her works, ‘with the sincere intention to extinguish for ever in their ashes her scribbling propensity’. She was anxious that she might turn into an author, a fate incompatible – for a woman – with respectability.
Her hope was in vain. Not only was she to write four novels (‘Evelina’, ‘Cecilia’, ‘Camilla’ and ‘The Wanderer’), all of which are still in print, she also kept a voluminous diary for the next seventy years and was a prolific letter-writer. Daughter of the eminent music historian Dr Charles Burney; friend of Sheridan, Garrick, Burke and Johnson; second keeper of the robes to George III’s Queen Charlotte; wife to a refugee French aristocrat; detained for ten years in revolutionary France; horrified witness of the aftermath of Waterloo; victim of a mastectomy without anaesthetic…Fanny Burney’s life was as eventful as any novel.
Reviews
‘A superb, highly intelligent, readable study…if a biography can claim perfect pitch, this one can.’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
‘Excellent..unlikely to be bettered for years to come.’ Kathryn Hughes, New Statesman
‘This scholarly, judicious and entertaining book is all that a biography should be.’ Ian McIntyre, The Times
‘A great achievement.’ Andrew Marr, Observer
‘Excellent.’ Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times
‘A thoroughly entertaining as well as scholarly book.’ Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph
About the author
Claire Harman's first book, a biography of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, was published by Chatto & Windus in 1989 and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for 'a book of value from a writer of growing stature'. Her second, a life of Fanny Burney (2000), published by HarperCollins, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. She has edited Warner's Collected Poems (1982) and Diaries (1994) as well as works by Robert Louis Stevenson, a new biography of whom she has just completed. Harman worked for the literary periodical PN Review in the 1980s and has taught at the universities of Manchester and Oxford. She has written for all the major British literary papers and currently teaches a course in creative writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Authoritative and scholarly, this is an entertaining biography of one of the earliest celebrated English women of letters. Harman, a British author (Sylvia Townsend Warner: A Biography), skillfully traces Fanny Burney's (1753 1840) life from her childhood as the daughter of composer and music historian Dr. Charles Burney through her career as a well-known novelist. Burney revered her father, and it was not until she was sure of his approval that she was able to enjoy the success of her first, sensational novel, the satirical Evelina(1777), published anonymously. When her authorship was revealed, she began to mingle in literary society and became acquainted with Samuel Johnson and other notables. In deference to her father's social ambitions, Burney accepted an appointment to the court of Queen Charlotte and "mad" King George III. Drawing on her subject's voluminous letters and journals, the author describes Burney's unhappiness during this period until, after five years, she received her father's permission to resign. An inspiration to Jane Austen and called "the mother of English fiction" by Virginia Woolf, Burney was nonetheless ambivalent about her status as a writer and would deprecate other novelists as she grew older. She married a French Royalist migr in her early 40s and had one son, whom she outlived. Of particular note and partially excerpted in this account is Burney's harrowing recollection of a mastectomy she endured in 1811 without an anesthetic. B&w illus.
