Fanny Burney

Frances Burney was born in Norfolk, England, in 1752. She and her five siblings began writing and privately acting out plays together when they were young. As a child, Burney also worked temporarily as a servant for King George III’s wife, the Queen of England and Ireland. Burney was a keen writer from a young age and secretly wrote her first novel, Evelina, in 1778. Novel-writing was not seen as a suitable career for a woman at the time, and Evelina was published anonymously soon after its completion. Burney also hid her writing from her father, but after he read Evelina, he guessed that Burney wrote it. Eventually, Burney’s name got out, and she developed a reputation in the literary world. Evelina sold many copies, and people were fascinated and scandalized by the idea of its female author. Burney wrote three more novels (Cecilia, Camilla, and The Wanderer) after this, which were all extremely popular. In 1793, Burney married a French nobleman who had been exiled during the French Revolution and gave birth to her son, Alexander, in 1794. The family travelled widely together but lived in France during the Napoleonic Wars. Burney and her family then relocated to Bath in England. Burney died in 1840. Several of her extensive diaries were published posthumously, and she became famous for the historical insight into 18th-century life that her personal writing gave.