Journals and Letters: Burney, Frances (Penguin Classics) [Paperback]

Fanny Burney (Author), Peter Sabor (Author), Lars E. Troide (Author), Frances Burney (Author), Victoria Kortes-Papp (Author)

Book Description

Series: Penguin Classics | Publication Date: October 30, 2001

Novelist and playwright Frances (Fanny) Burney, 1752-1840, was also a prolific writer of journals and letters, beginning with the diary she started at fifteen and continuing until the end of her eventful life. From her youth in London high society to a period in the court of Queen Charlotte and her years interned in France with her husband Alexandre d'Arblay during the Napoleonic Wars, she captured the changing times around her, creating brilliantly comic and candid portraits of those she encountered - including the mad' King George, Samuel Johnson, Sir Joshua Reynolds, David Garrick and a charismatic Napoleon Bonaparte. She also describes, in her most moving piece, undergoing a mastectomy at fifty-nine without anaesthetic. Whether a carefree young girl or a mature woman, Fanny Burney's forthright, intimate and wickedly perceptive voice brings her world powerfully to life.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Frances Burney (1752-1840) established her reputation with her novel, 'Evelina' (1778). After a period in Queen Charlotte's court, she and her husband, Alexander d'Arblay, were interned by Napoleon and lived in France until 1815. Widowed in 1818, she spent the rest of her life in London. Peter Sabor is Professor of English at Laval University, Quebec. Lars E Troide is Professor of English and Director of the Burney Papers Project at McGill University, Montreal.

Product Details

• Paperback: 608 pages
• Publisher: Penguin Classics (October 30, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0140436243
• ISBN-13: 978-0140436242
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 4.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #689,085 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Rich and Full Life, March 2, 2002

By 

James Paris "Tarnmoor" (Los Angeles, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journals and Letters: Burney, Frances (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

I was drawn to read this book by falling in love with a portrait of the author. She had a serenely pleasant face that radiated calm and good sense, and suddenly I wanted to know more about her. When I discovered that her diaries and letters cut a broad swath from 1778 to 1838, I was hooked.

Here is a woman who was an intimate of Dr Johnson, James Boswell, Joshua Reynolds, the Thrales, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the Bluestockings, George III and Queen Charlotte -- to name just a few. She was the first woman novelist who did not die in penury (like Aphra Behn and Charlotte Lennox): Her EVELINA, CECILIA, CAMILLA, and THE WANDERER are still readily available after more than 200 years. For five years, Miss Burney served as wardrobe maid for Queen Charlotte until illness forced her to resign. Her descriptions of the court of George III show the monarch at the beginnings of the madness that later debilitated him and contain some of her best prose.

By then, the French Revolution was in full swing, and scores of French nobility made their way to safety in England. When she met General d'Arblay, adjutant to the exiled Marquis de Lafayette, it was love at first sight for this 40-year-old woman who had never been married. Despite the opposition of her father, Fanny married d'Arblay and lived happily with him until his death more than 20 years later. Sadly, she also outlived her son from this marriage.

Fanny followed her husband to France during the Consulate and met the rising young Napoleon, Talleyrand, Louis XVIII (during Napoleon's exile at Elba), and other notables. She succeeded in raising a family near Paris despite the fact that, for a good part of that time, France was at war with England. At Waterloo, she helped by helping to create bandages for the wounded.

This is a book to read slowly and savor the feeling of another time. Fanny outlived the 18th Century "Age of Reason" and saw the birth of Romanticism and the beginning of the reign of Queen Victoria. I would like to have known her. Reading her diaries, I feel I do; and I feel even more drawn to her than before.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazingly eventful life, October 29, 2003

By 

"edmund_ting" (Australia) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Journals and Letters: Burney, Frances (Penguin Classics) (Paperback)

Frances Burney was in her day one of the most successful novelists in England and in later years Jane Austen was to be one of her fans. I haven't read her novels but on the basis of these letters and journals I have certainly become interested.

This book contains extracts from her letters and diaries stretching from 1768 to 1839, from childhood to old age. Her experiences in that time are very well summarised in the review above. I think that her experience as a novelist does show through in these letters which actually do read like scenes from a novel. Some are comic such as a humourous conversation between her friend George Cambridge and an Italian singer comparing the merits of their countries. Or the party attended by the Russian Prince Orlov who when showing off a valuable jewel which impresses the English ladies present, he asks them if they want anything else they "might strip him entirely". Other scenes are very dramatic such as her near drowning at Ilfracombe or her letters about the illness of King George III (in whose court she served at the time). There are also her various experiences in France and Belgium where she followed her husband who was a French aristocrat.

Another thing which makes these letters read like a novel is her ability at characterisation. This is especially clear in the cases of her friend Dr Samuel Johnson and her employer King George III. She records conversations she had with them so that we get a very good picture of what they were like as people. Though friends with Johnson she does not hide his tendency to sometimes be an argumentative bully or his strange mannerisms.

So overall these are a wonderful picture of what life was actually like in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Penguin edition has a comment on the back comparing this book to the diaries of Samuel Pepys and I fully agree.