An unladylike lady novelist

When film makers have sated themselves with Jane Austen and Henry James, they may wish to turn their attention to the work of Fanny Burney. She was a novelist of enormous popularity in the last decades of the 18th century, and her fictional books are all still in print today although less widely read than they deserve. Burney is often considered a precursor of Austen - in Northanger Abbey, the latter famously refers to Cecilia as a work "in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its vanities, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour are conveyed to the world in the best chosen language". Cecilia and its predecessor, Evelina, are the finest of Fanny Burney's meagre output; although she lived to the age of 88, she published only four novels. In spirit they are closer to Samuel Richardson than Jane Austen, 25 years her junior, whose little bit of ivory would have been too restrictive a site for Burney's always wideranging cast.

As with Richardson, her protagonists must undergo a series of picaresque adventures before eventually achieving happiness which - as usual for the period - is invariably equated with marriage and respectability. She refused to confine herself to the sphere of genteel society, and one of her most appealing qualities as a novelist is a willingness to acknowledge the existence of the poor and underprivileged. Nor does she fight shy of brutal realism when necessary. Her strength lies in detailed description of the diverse spheres through which she moved in all their absurdity and contradictions.

Meticulous examination or explanation of character, however, holds little interest for Burney; her people tend to represent types such as the dandy, the nouveau riche social climber, the villainous libertine and, of course, the virtuous heroine. In this respect, she is the precursor of much later writers such as Georgette Heyer, although obviously their superior. Essentially a social reporter, she used fiction as an opportunity to pass on her observations to a public hitherto largely unaware of its own foibles.

As an admirer of her books wrote earlier this century, reading Burney "is rather like having a mouse's view of the world of cats: the cats are very terrifying, but the mouse's sense of the ridiculous could not be keener". This impression is confirmed by her diaries and letters, first published shortly after her death in 1840 and immediately a success thanks to the fascinating view they provided of life in the previous century.

Burney's personal history is as complex as one she might have imagined. A daughter of England's first renowned musicologist, Dr Charles Burney, she was 26 when Evelina made its - initially anonymous - debut and brought her fame. As a result, she came to know well both Dr Johnson and his great friend Mrs Thrale - the latter portrayed as something of a villain in this new biography. Following various romantic misadventures, and a spell at court as Second Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, she eventually married, at the age of 40, General D'Arblay, a penniless - and Roman Catholic - emigre from the French Revolution.

Their courtship was conducted through a series of letters in which each gave lessons in the other's native language. She witnessed the madness of George III and Napoleon's rise to power in Paris, was in Brussels for the Battle of Waterloo and survived a mastectomy performed without any anaesthetic.

Despite such an extraordinary life, caution, reserve and shyness seem to have been the dominant traits of her personality. Even as a middle-aged woman, she felt obliged to write to her father justifying why she wished to become a playwright. Always in need of funds, somehow she was unable to be more productive, despite evident public demand for her work; something in Burney's personality remained unable or unwilling to capitalise on her fame. It is a pity Kate Chisholm does not investigate further why this should have been the case. Like her subject, she tends towards reticence. The result is a biography well-furnished with facts but rather lacking in analysis.

Robert O'Byrne is an Irish Times columnist

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