The 'Bluestocking Circle' and the fight for women's rights in literary salons May 31, 2008
What a formidable character Montagu was can be inferred from the advice that the novelist Fanny Burney received from her father when she wrote a satirical play about learned women, "The Witlings." Do not publish it, he recommended, it might offend Elizabeth Montagu. She was not the only Bluestocking with a hard edge. (International Herald Tribune)
The great unknown Jan 12, 2008
Fanny Burney, the earliest major woman novelist, was an unknown when she wrote her first novel, Evelina, but she had been amanuensis for her father, Charles Burney, whose General History of Music had recently been published ... Take the manoeuvres of Fanny Burney. (Guardian Unlimited -- Arts)
Knock, knock Jun 11, 2007
Google Books turns up the usage in a 1782 letter to the novelist Fanny Burney from Samuel Crisp, her literary mentor: "In vain comes Voltaire, with all the powers of wit, satire, learning, and art, to knock down Shakespeare, and turn him into ridicule.". And as early as the 1800s, knock downtook on essentially the meaning firefighters use today, "to lower or reduce in amount." An 1846 report of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland finds that "in May and June,... (Boston Globe)
'Shakespeare's sister' May 2, 2007
They might mean simply a few remarks about Fanny Burney, a few more about Jane Austen, a tribute to the Bronts and a sketch of Haworth Parsonage under snow; some witticisms if possible about Miss Mitford, a respectful allusion to George Eliot; a reference to Mrs Gaskell, and one would have done. But at second sight the words seemed not so simple. (Guardian Unlimited -- Books)
A year on, the image of the fire remains stark Jan 3, 2007
I was offered (and, I admit, accepted) a set of Rudyard Kipling to replace the one I had lost; an artist friend, whose picture had been destroyed, painted another, of great beauty, and presented it to us; from Australia came a trio of pen and ink drawings from the artist and Spitting Image creator, Roger Law; a neighbour, whom we had never met, picked up a burnt page from the Folio Society edition of Fanny Burney s Diary, then tracked down a new copy of the book, which she gave us; letters... (TimesOnline)
