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.

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By his second wife, Elizabeth Allen, whom he married in 1767, Dr. Burney had two children--a son, Richard Thomas, and a daughter, Sarah Harriet. The latter followed the career of her famous half-sister, and acquired some distinction as a novelist. Cousins Richard and Edward were younger sons of Uncle Richard Burney, of Worcester. Edward was successful as an artist, especially as a book- illustrator. He painted the portrait of Fanny Burney, a reproduction of which forms the frontispiece to the present volume. Some of his work may be seen in the South Kensington Museum. Chesington, where we shall presently find Fanny on a visit to Mr. Crisp, was an old roomy mansion, standing in the midst of a lonely common in Surrey, between Kingston and Epsom. It had belonged to Mr. Crisp's friend, Christopher Hamilton, and on his death became the property of his unmarried sister, Mrs. Sarah Hamilton, who, being in poor circumstances, let part of the house to a farmer, and took boarders. Of the latter, Mr. Crisp was the most constant, boarding at Chesington for nearly twenty years, and dying there in 1783. Kitty Cooke, whose name occurs in the “Diary,” was the niece of Mrs. Hamilton, and resided with her at Chesington. Mrs. Sophia Gast, whom we find a frequent visitor there, was the sister of Mr. Crisp, and resided at Burford, in Oxfordshire.

This eBook edition of "The Diary and Collected Letters of Madame D'Arblay, Frances Burney" has been formatted to the highest digital standards and adjusted for readability on all devices. Frances Burney was a famous English novelist, diarist and playwright. Burney's novels explore the lives of English aristocrats, and satirize their social pretensions and personal foibles, with an eye to larger questions such as the politics of female identity. She has gained critical respect in her own right, but she also foreshadowed such novelists of manners with a satirical bent as Jane Austen and Thackeray. Novels: Evelina Cecilia Camilla The Wanderer Plays: The Witlings Journals & Diaries: The Diary and Letters of Madame D'Arblay Other Works: Brief Reflections Relative to the French Emigrant Clergy Biography: Fanny Burney by Austin Dobson