Fanny Burney

Biography

Frances "Fanny" Burney (1752–1840), later Madame d'Arblay, was an English novelist, diarist, and playwright who was one of the most important novelists of the eighteenth century. Her first novel Evelina (1778), published anonymously, was an immediate sensation and made her famous when her authorship was revealed. Burney's novels pioneered the novel of manners and female experience, directly influencing Jane Austen, who admired her work enormously. Her detailed journals and letters, spanning over seventy years, provide an invaluable record of Georgian life and include a famous account of her mastectomy performed without anesthesia.