Her priceless record of life in the late 18th and early 19th centuries is preserved in what she called an 'immense Mass of Manuscripts,' consisting of diaries, journals, notebooks, and a voluminous correspondence begun in her fifteenth year.īefore publishing her second novel, Cecilia, in 1782, Burney had written and abandoned a comedy entitled The Witlings. d'Arblay, a French refugee, with whom she lived in France from 1802 to 1812. From 1787 to 1791 she served as second keeper of the robes to Queen Charlotte. An effective novel told in letters, it displays Burney's wit, knowledge of English society, technical versatility, sentiment, interest in contemporary theater, and gift for depicting character.Įvelina won Burney admission to the salons of the great and famous, many of whom she described vividly in her diaries and journals. The heroine's search for a father and a husband exposes both the vanity and affectation of life among the upper class and the vulgarity and lack of feeling which she associates with low life. Although she had begun to compose Evelina as early as 1767, she did not publish it until 1778, and then only anonymously.

She captured London's literary society with the publication of Evelina, or the History of a Young Lady's Entrance into the World, the best of her four extant novels. Charles Burney, the distinguished historian of music. She was also an important chronicler of English manners, morals, and society.įanny Burney, originally named Frances, was the daughter of Dr. The English novelist and diarist Fanny Burney (1752-1840) was one of the most popular novelists of the late 18th century.

Cecilia burney