Fanny Burney

Fanny Burney was born in 1752, the daughter of a musician and historian of music, taught herself, and at fifteen burned her first writings. She published her first novel anonymously in 1778, then spent five years at court as Keeper of the Robes to the queen. She married a French émigré general and lived ten years in Napoleon's France, where in 1811 she underwent a mastectomy without anaesthesia; the letter in which she recounts it remains a rare testimony. She died in 1840.

In the catalogue 1

• NovelEvelinaFanny Burney · 1778LiteraturePublic domain