‘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 SundayAt 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.
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Claire Harman. Fanny Burney: A biography
CLAIRE HARMAN. Fanny Burney
Dedication
Contents
Burney Family Tree
Preface
A Note on Nomenclature
1 A Low Race of Mortals
2 A Romantick Girl
3 Female Caution
4 An Accidental Author
5 Entrance into the World
6 Downright Scribler
7 Cecilia
8 Change and Decay
9 Retrograde Motion
10 Taking Sides
11 The Cabbage-Eaters
12 Winds and Waves
13 The Wanderer
14 Keeping Life Alive
Post Mortem
Appendix A
Appendix B
Bibliography. Works by Fanny Burney
Select Bibliography
Essays, Articles and Monographs
Index
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Notes
PREFACE
CHAPTER 1:A Low Race of Mortals
CHAPTER 2: A Romantick Girl
CHAPTER 3: Female Caution
CHAPTER 4: An Accidental Author
CHAPTER 5: Entrance into the World
CHAPTER 6: Downright Scribler
CHAPTER 7: Cecilia
CHAPTER 8: Change and Decay
CHAPTER 9: Retrograde Motion
CHAPTER 10: Taking Sides
CHAPTER 11: The Cabbage-Eaters
CHAPTER 12: Winds and Waves
CHAPTER 13: The Wanderer
CHAPTER 14: Keeping Life Alive
POST MORTEM
APPENDIX
Praise
By the Same Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
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A Biography
Title Page
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The contrast with Lynn was dramatic, the scope for entertainment and amazement seemingly endless. Though there were still fields and allotments a stone’s throw away in the undeveloped land to the north of Oxford Road (now Oxford Street), London was full of shows and spectacles guaranteed to impress young children straight from the provinces. The theatre at Drury Lane was well known to them through their father’s long association there with Arne and his friendship with Garrick; they also knew the rival theatre at Covent Garden and the splendid opera house in the Haymarket, which had room for three thousand spectators (about a third of the population of Lynn Regis). London was filling up with teahouses, coffee houses, strange miniature spas, assembly rooms, puppet shows and curiosity museums to cater for the leisure hours of the rapidly expanding metropolitan population.
Charles Burney admitted that a great deal of his success as a music teacher on his return to London in 1760 derived from ‘the powers of my little girl’, eleven-year-old Hetty. Musical child prodigies were fashionable, and even before the family’s move to London, Hetty had performed on the harpsichord at the Little Theatre in the Haymarket53 and attracted the praise of the king’s brother by her mastery of ‘some of the most wild and difficult lessons of Scarlatti’.54 Burney wrote showy exercises for her and for his brother Richard’s eldest son, Charles Rousseau Burney, a precociously talented violinist and keyboard player. The next generation of musical Wunderkinder to hit London would be Maria Anna and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1764, but for the time being the Burneys held the laurels. The proud Charles published a volume of harpsichord lessons to cash in on the method he had used to teach these two celebrated young performers, and was overcome with requests for new pupils, especially from among the ‘great folks’ in whose drawing rooms and music rooms his ingratiating charm went down particularly well.
