Fanny Burney
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few women of the eighteenth century wielded a pen with such quiet brilliance as Frances Fanny Burney — novelist, diarist, and reluctant courtier — and Sarah Kilpatrick's authoritative biography restores this literary pioneer to her rightful place in the canon of English letters. Kilpatrick chronicles Burney's remarkable journey from the drawing rooms of Georgian London, where she dazzled society with her debut novel Evelina, through the stifling confines of the royal court as Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, to her later years in France as the wife of a French general, during which she endured — and documented with unflinching precision — a mastectomy without anaesthetic. Kilpatrick's narrative illuminates the paradox at the heart of Burney's life: a woman of immense creative gifts perpetually constrained by the social expectations of her age, yet who nonetheless produced diaries and letters that rank among the finest prose of the period. The biography presents a rich portrait of a Georgian world populated by literary giants — Dr. Johnson, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick among them — all of whom recognised Burney's singular genius. Written with scholarly rigour and an elegant, accessible style, this is an indispensable study for anyone drawn to the lives of women who wrote their way into history against formidable odds.
Author: Sarah Kilpatrick
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few women of the eighteenth century wielded a pen with such quiet brilliance as Frances Fanny Burney — novelist, diarist, and reluctant courtier — and Sarah Kilpatrick's authoritative biography restores this literary pioneer to her rightful place in the canon of English letters. Kilpatrick chronicles Burney's remarkable journey from the drawing rooms of Georgian London, where she dazzled society with her debut novel Evelina, through the stifling confines of the royal court as Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, to her later years in France as the wife of a French general, during which she endured — and documented with unflinching precision — a mastectomy without anaesthetic. Kilpatrick's narrative illuminates the paradox at the heart of Burney's life: a woman of immense creative gifts perpetually constrained by the social expectations of her age, yet who nonetheless produced diaries and letters that rank among the finest prose of the period. The biography presents a rich portrait of a Georgian world populated by literary giants — Dr. Johnson, Edmund Burke, and David Garrick among them — all of whom recognised Burney's singular genius. Written with scholarly rigour and an elegant, accessible style, this is an indispensable study for anyone drawn to the lives of women who wrote their way into history against formidable odds.