BURNEY, Frances.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay; A finely bound set of the revised diaries and letters of the woman Virginia Woolf called the "mother of English fiction" (ODNB). These contain extra illustrations and extensive notes by a leading authority on 18th-century literature and celebrated Victorian poet and biographer. Textually they remain faithful to the original volumes published between 1842 and 1847. Barrett carefully edited Burney's writing over a two-year period following her death and the work marked the first publication in English of a woman's diaries. It has long been appreciated for its "vivid portrayals of late Georgian England and post-revolutionary France" (ODNB). The diary includes personal testimonies of the madness of George III, David Garrick's famous performances at Drury Lane Theatre, and an intimate portrait of Samuel Johnson. Thomas Macaulay stated Burney's "place in public estimate will be fixed not by what other people may write about her but by what she has written herself" (Delafield, p. 27). Historians of medicine find importance in the diary for its early and vivid account of a mastectomy performed to treat Burney's suspected breast cancer. The feminine form of the diary reveals that "the personal record of self is a challenge to the ideological constraints placed on women of the period" (Delafield, p. 27).

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