Fanny Burney by Claire Harman
‘Dazzling… full of special delights. Harman excels in the vivid presentation of scenes, the selection of detail… [a] marvellous and beautifully written book’ Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday On 13 June 1767, her fifteenth birthday, Fanny Burney made a bonfire of all her works, ‘with the sincere intention to extinguish for ever in their ashes her scribbling propensity’. Fanny was genuinely worried that she might turn into an author, a fate incompatible – for a woman – with respectability. Her hope was in vain. Not only was she to write four novels (Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla and The Wanderer), all of which are still in print, but she also kept a voluminous diary for the next 70 years and was a prolific letter-writer. Daughter of the eminent music historian Dr Charles Burney; editor of his infamous Memoirs; friend of Sheridan, Garrick, Burke, Boswell and Johnson; second keeper of the robes to George III’s Queen Charlotte; wife to a refugee French aristocrat; detained for ten years in revolutionary France; victim of a mastectomy without anaesthetic… Fanny Burney’s life was as eventful as any novel.‘A superb, highly intelligent, readable study…if a biography can claim perfect pitch, this one can’ Eileen Battersby, Irish Times
‘Excellent.unlikely to be bettered for years to come’ Kathryn Hughes, New Statesman
‘This scholarly, judicious and entertaining book is all that a biography should be’ Ian McIntyre, The Times
‘A great achievement’ Andrew Marr, Observer
‘Excellent’ Miranda Seymour, Sunday Times
‘A thoroughly entertaining as well as scholarly book’ Allan Massie, Daily Telegraph
Claire Harman's first book, a biography of the novelist Sylvia Townsend Warner, was published by Chatto & Windus in 1989 and won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for 'a book of value from a writer of growing stature'. Her second, a life of Fanny Burney (2000), published by HarperCollins, was shortlisted for the Whitbread Prize. She has edited Warner's Collected Poems (1982) and Diaries (1994) as well as works by Robert Louis Stevenson, a new biography of whom she has just completed. Harman worked for the literary periodical PN Review in the 1980s and has taught at the universities of Manchester and Oxford. She has written for all the major British literary papers and currently teaches a course in creative writing at Columbia University's School of the Arts.
| SKU | Unavailable |
| ISBN 13 | 9780002556903 |
| ISBN 10 | 0002556901 |
| Title | Fanny Burney |
| Author | Claire Harman |
| Condition | Unavailable |
| Binding Type | Hardback |
| Publisher | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Year published | 2000-07-03 |
| Number of pages | 464 |
| Prizes | Short-listed for Whitbread Book Awards: Biography Category 2000 |
| Cover note | Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary. |
| Note | Unavailable |