Emphasizing Frances Burney's professionalism and her courage, Janice Farrar Thaddeus shows the protean writer who recognised her abilities and exercised them, always carefully shaping her career. Though now frequently depicted as retiring, even fearful, Burney forced on her reading public themes they were scarcely ready for, flamboyantly mixing genres, writing comically about intimate violence. Not content in old age to be merely a literary icon, she privately recorded with increasing clarity the moments when the world lacerates the self.

Autorentext

Janice Farrar Thaddeus is Senior Lecturer and Director of Studies, History and Literature, Harvard University.

Zusammenfassung

'At this date it is no small achievement to come up with new, valid, important, and definitive insights about Frances Burney, but in this fine focussed work, Thaddeus has managed it. Moreover, delightfully and gracefully written, the book is a page-turner.' - Professor Betty Rizzo, City College of New York

Inhalt
Writing as Compulsion and the Redefined Audience (1752-78) Publishing Anonymously: The Early Diaries and the Intricacies of the Mask (1773-79) Evelina : the 'Male' Author and her Boisterous Book (1778-9) Open Authorship: The Witlings, Cecilia , and the Unruly Text (1779-84) Sufferer, Tragedian, and Witness (1784-92) Camilla and the Family (1792-1802) Independence, Marriage, and Comedies Without Fetters (1792-1802) The Wanderer : Financial Success, Commercial Failure, and the Untamed Spirit (1802-28) Memoirs of Dr Burney : Circumscribing the Power (1814-40) Fiction and Truth: All the Unpublished Words Index