Frances Burney - Education

Education

Frances’ sisters Esther and Susanna were favoured over Frances by their father, for what he perceived as their superior attractiveness and intelligence. At the age of eight, Frances had not yet learned the alphabet, and some scholars suggest that Burney suffered from a form of dyslexia. By the age of ten, however, she had begun to write for her own amusement. Esther and Susanna were sent by their father to be educated in Paris, while at home Frances educated herself by reading from the family collection, including Plutarch’s Lives, works by Shakespeare, histories, sermons, poetry, plays, novels and courtesy books. She drew on this material, along with her journals, when writing her first novels. Scholars who have looked into the extent of Burney’s reading and self-education find a child who was unusually precocious and ambitious, working hard to overcome a childhood disability.

A critical aspect of Frances’ literary education was her relationship with the Burneys’ family friend, the “cultivated littérateur” Samuel Crisp. He encouraged Burney’s writing by soliciting frequent journal-letters from her that recounted to him the goings-on in her family and social circle in London. Frances paid her first formal visit to Crisp at Chessington Hall in Surrey in 1766. Dr Burney had first made Crisp's acquaintance in about 1745 at the house of Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville. Crisp's play Virginia, staged by David Garrick in 1754 at the request of the Countess of Coventry (née Maria Gunning), had been unsuccessful, and Crisp had retired to Chessington Hall, where he frequently entertained Dr Burney and his family.