Editing Frances Burney (section)

==Overview of career==
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Frances Burney was a novelist, diarist and playwright. In all, she wrote four novels, eight plays, one biography and twenty-five volumes of journals and letters. She has gained critical respect in her own right, but she foreshadowed such [[novel of manners|novelists of manners]] with a satirical bent as [[Jane Austen]] and [[William Makepeace Thackeray]].

She published her first novel, ''[[Evelina]]'', anonymously in 1778. Burney feared that her father would find what she called her "scribblings", so she only told her siblings and two trusted aunts about the work. Her closest sister, [[Susan Burney|Susanna]], helped with the cover-up.<ref name=sis>{{Cite ODNB |last=Olleson |first=Philip |title=Phillips [née Burney], Susanna Elizabeth [Susan] (1755–1800), letter writer |date=2016-10-06 |url=http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-109741|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/109741 |isbn=978-0-19-861412-8 |access-date=24 July 2022}}</ref> Eventually, her father read the novel and guessed that she was its author. News of her identity spread.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.openlettersmonthly.com/glance-evelina-fanny-burney/ |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20101029021304/www.openlettersmonthly.com/glance-evelina-fanny-burney/ |archive-date=29 October 2010 |title=Second Glance: Wave and Say Hello to Frances {{!}} Open Letters Monthly – an Arts and Literature Review |website=openlettersmonthly.com |access-date=4 May 2017}}</ref> The novel brought Burney almost immediate fame with its unique narrative and comic strengths. She followed it with ''[[Cecilia (Burney novel)|Cecilia]]'' in 1782, ''[[Camilla (Burney novel)|Camilla]]'' in 1796 and ''[[The Wanderer (Burney novel)|The Wanderer]]'' in 1814.

All Burney's novels explore the lives of [[British nobility|English aristocrats]] and satirises their social pretensions and personal foibles, with an eye to larger questions such as the politics of female identity. With one exception, Burney never succeeded in having her plays performed, largely due to objections from her father, who thought that publicity from such an effort would be damaging to her reputation. The exception was ''[[Edwy and Elgiva]]'', which was not well received by the public and closed after the first night's performance despite having [[Sarah Siddons]] in the cast.<ref>{{Citation |last=Sabor |first=Peter |title=Edwy and Elgiva: Frances Burney |date=2019 |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781351025140-6/edwy-elgiva-peter-sabor |work=The Routledge Anthology of British Women Playwrights, 1777–1843 |publisher=Routledge |doi=10.4324/9781351025140-6 |isbn=978-1-351-02514-0 |s2cid=199267251 |access-date=13 June 2022}}</ref>

Although her novels were hugely popular during her lifetime, Burney's reputation as a writer of fiction suffered after her death at the hands of biographers and critics, who felt that the extensive diaries, published posthumously in 1842–1846, offer a more interesting and accurate portrait of 18th-century life. Today, critics are returning to her novels and plays with renewed interest in her outlook on the social lives and struggles of women in a predominantly male-oriented culture. Scholars continue to value Burney's diaries as well, for their candid depictions of English society.<ref name="Commire, Klezmer 231">Commire, Klezmer, pg. 231.</ref>

Throughout her writing career, Burney's talent for satirical caricature was widely acknowledged: figures such as [[Samuel Johnson|Dr Samuel Johnson]], [[Edmund Burke]], [[Hester Thrale|Hester Lynch Thrale]], [[David Garrick]] and other members of the [[Blue Stockings Society]] to which she aligned herself were among her admirers. Her early novels were read and enjoyed by Jane Austen, whose own title ''[[Pride and Prejudice]]'' derives from the final pages of ''Cecilia''. Thackeray is said to have drawn on the first-person account of the [[Battle of Waterloo]] recorded in her diaries while writing his ''[[Vanity Fair (novel)|Vanity Fair]]''.<ref>[http://dept.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/burney/biofb.html Biography of Frances Burney<!-- Bot generated title -->]{{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20060616055007/http://dept.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/burney/biofb.html |date=16 June 2006}}</ref>

Burney's early career was strongly affected by her relations with her father and the critical attentions of a family friend, [[Samuel Crisp]]. Both encouraged her writing, but used their influence to dissuade her from publishing or performing her dramatic comedies, as they saw the genre as inappropriate for a lady. Many feminist critics see her as an author whose natural talent for satire was stifled by the social pressures on female authors.<ref name="Commire">Commire, Anne and Deborah Klezmer. ''Women in World History: a biographical encyclopedia''. (Waterford: Yorkin Publications, 1999–2002), pg. 231.</ref> Burney persisted despite the setbacks. When her comedies were poorly received, she returned to novel writing, and later tried her hand at tragedy. She supported both herself and her family on the proceeds of her later novels, ''Camilla'' and ''The Wanderer''.