Fanny Burney

In Our Time: Culture

BBC

History

4.6 • 978 Ratings

🗓️ 23 April 2015

⏱️ 45 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the life and work of the 18th-century novelist, playwright and diarist Fanny Burney, also known as Madame D'Arblay and Frances Burney. Her first novel, Evelina, was published anonymously and caused a sensation, attracting the admiration of many eminent contemporaries. In an era when very few women published their work she achieved extraordinary success, and her admirers included Dr Johnson and Edmund Burke; later Virginia Woolf called her 'the mother of English fiction'.

With

Nicole Pohl Reader in English Literature at Oxford Brookes University

Judith Hawley Professor of Eighteenth-Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London

and

John Mullan Professor of English at University College London.

Producer: Simon Tillotson.

Transcript

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0:44.0	Hello Virginia Wolf called Fanny Bernie, the mother of English fiction.
0:48.0	Bernie's first novel Evelina, published anonymously in 17, was an immediate sensation and success.
0:55.2	With this and her later books, it's claimed that she inspired a generation of writers including
0:59.3	Jane Austin.
1:01.1	Fagnell Francis Burney is arguably even more remarkable for her letters and journals in which she vividly describes events such as the Mad King George who chased her round the gardens at Kew, being in Brussels the night before Waterloo and her own mastectomy performed at home without anesthetic.
1:17.0	Apparently shy in the enemy of snobs, she lived a remarkable life at a remarkable time.
1:22.0	We'd meet to discuss Fanny Bernie R.
1:23.4	Nickel Pole, reader in English literature at Oxford Books University,
1:27.5	Judith Hawley, Professor of 18th Century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of
	...

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