The Fear of Discovery: The Journals of Fanny Burney

Abstract

At the age of fifteen in 1768 Fanny Burney began writing her diary with a delight that came from a mixture of nervousness and exhilaration. Yet by the time she made her final entry in 1840 that same diary had become her major literary work. Between those two dates she had participated in, and recorded, some of the most dramatic events of her time. She was a best-selling novelist by the time she was thirty, fêted by the most celebrated intellectual and artistic figures of her day. Appointed later as lady-in-waiting to the court of Queen Charlotte, she became a privileged member of the inner royal circle at a time when the reverberations of the French Revolution seemed to threaten the entire institution of royalty. Following her marriage to a French refugee, she went to live in Paris after the Terror, but was prevented from returning home by the outbreak of war, and in 1815 she witnessed at first hand the terrible aftermath of the battle of Waterloo. Despite a reputation for frailty, she not only survived a horrific operation for breast cancer at the age of fifty-nine, but lived on to eighty-seven, having nursed her husband during his last agonising illness. All these events are described in her journal which forms a dynamic portrait of an age in turmoil as well as of the woman who lived through it.

The fear of discovery, or of suspicion in the house, made the copying extremely laborious to me: for in the day time, I could only take odd moments, so that I was obliged to sit up the greatest part of many nights, in order to get it ready.

—Fanny Burney. Early Diary, 1777