Frances Burney – krótka historia powieściopisarki, która spóźniła się na romantyzm
Frances Burney – A Short History of a Writer Who Was Late for Romanticism

Author(s): Anna Paluchowska-Messing
Subject(s): Applied Linguistics, Studies of Literature, 19th Century, Philology, British Literature
Published by: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego
Keywords: Frances Burney; The Wanderer; 19th-century novel English; Romanticism; Mary Wollstonecraft; literary canon
Summary/Abstract: The paper presents a sketch of the life and literary career of Frances Burney, the first best-selling woman writer in the history of the British novel. The main focus is Burney’s negotiations of her own public image as conducted in her literary works. While the outcome of Burney’s endeavours in this quarter was at first very much to her advantage, in time the novelist’s reputation as a writer of merit seems to have faded. To explain the reasons for such a turn of events, the paper explores the contrast between Burney’s debut, "Evelina" (1778), and her last published novel, "The Wanderer; Or Female Difficulties" (1814), scrutinising the narrative choices made in the two texts, the scope of the themes they examine, and the reception each met with on its publication. The conclusions of this analysis show that the engagement of The Wanderer in political and social debates made it a controversial text in the times following the havoc of the French Revolution. The British society of the early 19th century was not then disposed to open anew the discussions on the rights of man or woman, which had shaken Europe two decades previously. In this sense, Burney’s last novel came too late to be counted among the first Romantic texts. On the other hand, as the paper shows, new readings of the text today reveal the freshness of the multidimensional approach Burney presents to the dilemmas she sets for her characters in the novel. In this sense, while The Wanderer may have been published too late for Romanticism, it is certainly not too late to read and appreciate the novel today.

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