Author Description

This is the second of two volumes of The Additional Journals and Letters of Frances Burney. Together the volumes present material not included in the existing series of Frances Burney's journals and letters. Volume I printed Burney's journals and letters from the beginning of 1784 until her appointment at Court in July 1786, closing the gap between The Early Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney, which covers the period 1768-1783, and The Court Journals and Letters of Frances Burney, which covers the period 1786-1791.This volume consists of all the letters, and journal and diary entries, written between 1791 and 1840 that were not included in the series of later journals, thus completing the modern editing of Burney's surviving journals and letters from 1768 until her death in 1840. Among Burney's many correspondents in this volume, the most prominent is Hester Maria Thrale, known as Queeney, the eldest daughter of Hester Lynch Thrale and Henry Thrale. Sixty-four of the letters in this volume, dating from Burney's residence in France, 1802-1812, are written, in French, to sixteen different correspondents; they are printed here with accompanying English translations. About twenty of the letters are to members of her family, including one that she wrote in London to her husband in Paris in May 1813 which throws much new light on her life in England and on her progress in completing her final novel, The Wanderer. There are also letters to a variety of friends and acquaintances, some of long standing and others whom Burney first met only in her later years, including several to the Reverend Charles Forster, grandfather of E.M. Forster.