Who is the ‘Mother of English fiction’? Virginia Woolf declared it was Fanny Burney.
Born in King’s Lynn in 1752, Fanny is noted by a plaque on the wall at 84 High Street. She was baptised in the impressive St Nicholas chapel where ceiling angels gazed at the infant writer who would one day be commemorated at Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey. Visit St Nicholas’, sit on a carved bench and open one of her books. Perhaps in this beautiful space, with her witty words in your hands, you’ll be inspired to write too.
After all, it was Fanny’s comic observation of character and manners that paved the way for novelists like Jane Austen and Wodehouse. But her first novel was published anonymously, in 1778. Even Fanny’s father didn’t know the author of ‘Evelina, or, A Young Lady’s Entrance into the World’ was his own daughter. Although at the centre of brilliantly artistic social circles, a woman publishing her work was still an astonishingly radical act. Yet when her identity was revealed, bookshops couldn’t keep up with demand.
In 1760 the family moved to London where Fanny became the Queen’s ‘Keeper of the Robes’. Her lively diaries are a rich historical resource, giving a female perspective of major political events, court life (including George III chasing her round the gardens) and a wince-making account of her mastectomy, performed with no anaesthetic by Napoleon’s doctor.
She died in 1840, forever a trail-blazer for women writers and shrewd social satirists.
