Kate Chisholm - Fanny Burney: Her Life

Fanny Burney (1752-1840) is best known as the author of EVELINA, one of the most engaging novels of the eighteenth century. But for much of her long life, she was also an incomparable diarist, witnessing both the madness of George III and the young Queen Victorias coronation. To read the journals she kept from the age of sixteen is to step back into Georgian England, meeting Dr Johnson, Garrick and Reynolds, being chased round the gardens of Kew Palace by the King... She was lady-in-writing to Queen Charlotte; she married an aristocratic emigre from the French Revolution and had her first and only child when she was forty-two; she was in Paris as Napoleons armies marshalled against England, and in Brussels she heard the muffled guns, and watched the wounded being carried back from Waterloo. Kate Chisholms delightful biography, incorporating the latest research and illustrate with unusual portraits and drawings, is lively, funny, shocking, informative and deeply moving; it paints a vivid portrait of a woman of great talent, against the changing background of England and France, a culture and an age.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Kate Chisholm was born and brought up in the vicarages of north London. After graduating in History from Edinburgh University she worked in publishing and literary journalism and is now Assistant Literary Editor of the Sunday Telegraph.

Maps and Family Tree

(Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)

(Guildhall Library, Corporation of London)

(From Paris de 1800 1900 Daprs les Estampes et les Memoires du Temps. Volume I: 18001830, Le Consulat; Le Premier Empire; La Restauration by Charles Simond, Paris, 1900)

Section 1

(Courtesy of The Brooklyn Museum)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(The Osborn Collection, with kind permission of Yale University Library)

(R. A. Lynex Collection, with kind permission of Penelope and Anthea Lynex)

(with kind permission of Professor Lars Troide)

(Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

Charles Burney, DD, by Thomas Lawrence (John Comyn/By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(Christies Images)

(The British Museum)

(Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce)

(John Comyn/ By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(John Comyn/ By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(Courage Ltd)

(Gift of Lord Beaverbrook, The Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada)

(From Charles Beecher Hogans The London Stage, Part V: 17761800, Southern Illinois University Press)

(Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

(Courtesy of Stratford-upon-Avon Town Council)

(The British Museum)

(The Board of Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum)

Section 2

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(Courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California)

(Courtesy of the Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California)

(The Royal CollectionHer Majesty The Queen)

(The Royal CollectionHer Majesty The Queen)

(From Austin Dobsons 1904 edition of The Diaries and Letters of Madame dArblay, volume vi, Macmillan)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(John Bebbington, FRPS)

(The British Museum)

(The British Museum)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

Pencil sketch of a retriever, possibly by Monsieur dArblay (Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations)

(From the collection at Parham Park, West Sussex)

(By courtesy of The National Portrait Gallery, London)

(From the collection at Parham Park, West Sussex)