The Wanderer and Memoirs of Dr. Burney
Burney published her fourth novel, The Wanderer: Or, Female Difficulties, a few days prior to Charles Burney’s death. Described as “a story of love and misalliance set in the French Revolution”, it criticizes the English treatment of foreigners during the war years. It also pillories the hypocritical social curbs put on women in general—as the heroine tries one means after another to earn an honest penny—as well as the elaborate class criteria for social inclusion or exclusion. That strong social message sits uneasily within a strange structure that might be called a melodramatic proto-mystery novel with elements of the picaresque. The heroine is no scalliwag, in fact a bit too innocent for modern taste, but she is wilful and for obscure reasons will not reveal her name or origin. So as she darts about the South of England as a fugitive, she arouses suspicions that it is not always easy to agree with the author are unfair or unjustified. There are a dismaying number of coincidental meetings of characters. Burney made £1500 from the first run, but the work disappointed her followers and it did not go into a second English printing, although it met her immediate financial needs. Critics felt it lacked the insight of her earlier novels. It remains interesting today for the social opinions that it conveys and for some flashes of Burney's humour and discernment of character. It was reprinted with an introduction by the novelist Margaret Drabble in the "Mothers of the Novel" series.
After her husband’s death, Burney moved to London to be nearer to her son, who was a fellow at Christ's College. In homage to her father she gathered and in 1832 published, in three volumes, the Memoirs of Doctor Burney. The memoirs were written in a laudatory style, praising her father's accomplishments and character, and she cannibalised many of her own personal writings from years before in order to produce them. Always protective of her father and the family’s reputation, she deliberately destroyed evidence of facts that were painful or unflattering, and was soundly criticised by her contemporaries and later by historians for doing so. Otherwise, she lived essentially in retirement, outliving her son, who died in 1837, and her sister Charlotte Broome, who died in 1838. Burney was visited in Bath by younger members of the Burney family, who found her a fascinating storyteller with a talent for imitating the personalities that she described. She continued to write to her family often.
Frances Burney died on 6 January 1840. She was buried with her son and her husband in Walcot cemetery in Bath, and a gravestone was later erected in the churchyard of St Swithin's across the road. A Royal Society of Arts blue plaque commemorates Burney at 11 Bolton Street in Mayfair.
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