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Hello Virginia Woolf called Fanny Bernie, the mother of English fiction.

Bernie's first novel, Ivalina, published anonymously in 1778, was an immediate sensation and success.

With this and her later books it's claimed that she inspired a generation of writers including Jane Austen.

Fanny or Frances Bernie is arguably even more remarkable for letters and journals in which she vividly describes events such as the Mad King George,

who chased her around the gardens at Q, being in Brussels the night before Waterloo, and her own mastectomy performed at home without anesthetic.

Apparently shy in the enemy of snubs, she lived a remarkable life at a remarkable time.

We've met to discuss Fanny Bernie R. Nichol Pohl, read in English literature at Oxford Books University.

Judith Hawley, professor of 18th century literature at Royal Holloway University of London, and John Mullin, professor of English at University of College London.

Judith Hawley, what was life like in her family for Frances?

Well Frances Bernie was born in 1752 in King's Lynn in Norfolk.

Her father Charles was organist at the church there and a music master.

And King's Lynn was, compared to London was something of a backwashed in those days.

Bernie, her father was an important musician, but he had moved out of London for his health.

And he felt kind of be calmed in the area.

But it was an international port and a very lively bustling city with a thriving merchant class who supported local music.

So music and the arts and social relations are very important themes throughout her life.

She was the third of six children of Charles Berners' first marriage to his true love, Esther Sleep.

And it's a very close knit family.

They had all sorts of secret code words and throughout their lives they banded together both to support each other,

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