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The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney: Volume I: 1768-1773

Fanny Burney author Lars E Troide editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:2nd Jun '88

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The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney: Volume I: 1768-1773 cover

Fanny Burney was best known in her own time as the author of Evelina and other novels. Her modern reputation, however, rests primarily on her extensive journals and letters, first published posthumously by her niece and literary executive, Mrs Charlotte Barrett. In this initial volume of a new edition, Fanny's earliest journals are published for the first time in their original state, freed from the prudent afterthoughts of Fanny's old age. Much new material emerges from a deciphering of several thousand lines heavily scored over by Fanny. We here encounter the keenly observed world of a precocious young girl, expanding outward from the comfort and security of a London middle-class home to the glittering excitement of the capital, with its theatres, operas, pleasure grounds, and park promenades. Principal stars in these pages are Fanny's father, the music historian Dr Charles Burney; her sister Hetty and stepsister Maria Allen, whose love affairs read like a romantic novel; and Dr Burney's old friends Samuel Crisp - virtually a second father to Fanny - and David Garrick, the famous actor. Only a teenager, Fanny already sketches these and a host of other memorable characters with the sure hand of a seasoned artist. The result is a lively and fascinating portrait of Georgian England.

`generous resources have graced the new edition of Fanny Burney's Early Journals and Letters ... Lars E. Troide announces that there are to be "ten or twelve" volumes, and the first is carefully annotated and finely produced.' Times Literary Supplement
`useful and scholarly book' London Review of Books
`Beautifully edited by Lars Troide and printed to ensure the greatest readability, this first volume ... makes one look forward to the rest with curiousity and pleasure.' London Review of Books
'the editorial labors involved have been heroic and the result is handsome, copiously annotated, and potentially rich as a source of new critical insights into Burney's literary production' D. Landry, University of Southern California, Choice
'Troide's edition is an excellent one. It has been painstakingly executed ... The book is ... of considerable interest to musicologists, biographers and literary historians alike.' Ingrid Tieken-Boon van Ostade, University of Leiden, English Studies
'Lars Troide and his colleagues haven't quite managed to resurrect the burnt volumes, but they have done very ingenious things with the manuscripts that remain. As a result the first two volumes of this new edition contain a wealth of newly recovered material, making about twenty per cent of the total in the first volume ... these volumes give a vivid impression of what it meant to be young, gifted and female in eighteenth-century England. The scrupulous editing makes them excellent complements to Joyce Hemlow's massive edition of the later journals.' Jane Spencer, University of Exeter, Journal of Gender Studies, Volume 1, Number 2, November 1991
'lively and compelling narrative' K.E. Smith, University of Bradford, British Journal for 18th-Century Studies 15:1

ISBN: 9780198125815

Dimensions: 226mm x 144mm x 27mm

Weight: 657g

406 pages