The Burney Journal
LightNews LightNews
burneyjournal.bsky.social
The Burney Journal
@burneyjournal.bsky.social
43 followers 39 following 17 posts
An annual publication of twenty years' standing, publishing peer-reviewed scholarship on the Burney family and their circles. Available in print subscription and online open-access formats.
https://theburneyjournal.library.mcgill.ca/about/submissions.
Posts Replies Media Videos
burneyjournal.bsky.social
The final contribution is Sophie Coulombeau's review of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, by @rebeccaromney.com. (6/7)
Image of the front cover of Rebecca Romney's Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend The final contribution to this issue of the Burney Journal is my own longform book review of Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend, by Rebecca Romney. In “Brushes With Burney” I take Romney’s book as a departure point to reflect on the importance of first encounters with Frances Burney and her writing, on Burney’s “value” within the rare book marketplace, and on the benefits of high-quality trade writing for Burney scholarship.
June 10, 2025 at 7:12 AM
burneyjournal.bsky.social
In the “Year in Burney Studies 2022-24” Deborah Barnum contributes a heroic 3-year bibliography of monographs, articles, chapters, radio programs, theses & dissertations addressing the Burneys which have been published since 2021: 122 entries in total! Esp valuable for reasons outlined below...(5/7)
In the “Year in Burney Studies 2022-24” Deborah Barnum contributes a heroic three-year bibliography of monographs, articles, chapters, radio programs, theses, and dissertations published since 2021. Featuring 122 entries in total, the bibliography brings us fully up to date and continues the Journal’s valuable record of scholarly and creative activity relating to Frances Burney and her family. At a time when many institutional libraries (including my own) are facing budget reductions and making cuts to resources such as the MLA International Bibliography, and when many other search engines are presenting results skewed and corrupted by experiments in Artificial Intelligence, the “Year In Burney Studies” is a more valuable resource than ever.
June 10, 2025 at 7:08 AM
burneyjournal.bsky.social
In “Cecilia and the Eighteenth-Century Breakfast,” Madeline Maya explores the tonal, structural and conceptual importance of the breakfast table scene within Frances Burney’s second novel, Cecilia: or, Memoirs of an Heiress (1782). (4/7)
Cecilia and the Eighteenth-Century Breakfast MADELINE MAYA Abstract: This article explores the tonal, structural and conceptual importance of the breakfast table scene within Frances Burney’s second novel, Cecilia (1782). Building on Sarah Moss’s work exploring ambivalent attitudes to food within Burney’s life writing, I show that within Burney’s fiction the breakfast table scene often operates as a site of discomfort, anxiety and entrapment. Moreover, I suggest, in dialogue with other recent readings of Cecilia that have highlighted key scenes as particularly crucial to the novel’s structure, that the breakfast scene acts as a “hinge” (to re-purpose Arnold Palmer’s term), which opens the door on a new character, development, or section of the plot; it is a narrative signal that an important shift is about to take place.
June 10, 2025 at 7:04 AM
burneyjournal.bsky.social
In “General d’Arblay’s Mementoes of a Military Life,” Miriam Al Jamil examines several little-known material objects relating to General Alexandre d’Arblay, Frances Burney’s husband, in a quest to draw d’Arblay’s biography out from the prism of his wife’s writing. (3/7)
General d’Arblay’s Mementoes of a Military Life MIRIAM AL JAMIL Abstract: Later in life, General Alexandre d’Arblay became acutely aware that his wife’s literary fame might eclipse his own military honors in the eyes of posterity, and he became anxious that his son Alex should have some evidence of his achievements after his death. His trip to Paris in 1817 was made in part to have a portrait painted by Horace Vernet to commemorate his military status. This article examines the portrait, alongside a panoramic sketch of the field of Waterloo that d’Arblay made, to argue that the production and curation of these military mementoes were originally intended to fashion a legacy of his achievements, independent of his wife’s literary fame, for the benefit of his son. Figure 1. General Alexandre D’Arblay. Horace and Carle Vernet, 1817, Oil on canvas, 52 x 44.5 cm. Author’s own photograph. Image provided by kind permission of Parham House, Sussex. Figure 2. Display format at Parham. Author’s own photograph. Image provided by kind permission of Parham House, Sussex. Figure 3. The case containing the medals. Author’s own photograph. Image provided by kind permission of Parham House, Sussex.
June 10, 2025 at 7:02 AM
burneyjournal.bsky.social
In “‘Grateful acknowledgements to Captain Burney’: Poetry and History in Mary Russell Mitford’s Christina, the Maid of the South Seas,” Geoffrey Sill examines an Oceanic literary-historical collaboration between Mary Russell Mitford and James Burney, published in 1811. (2/7)
“Grateful acknowledgements to Captain Burney”: Poetry and History in Mary Russell Mitford’s Christina, the Maid of the South Seas GEOFFREY SILL Abstract: In 1811 Mary Russell Mitford published Christina, Maid of the South Seas, a poem which drew inspiration from a report in the Quarterly Review of the discovery of a settlement on Pitcairn Island founded by surviving mutineers from the Bounty. For assistance with the historical notes, she enlisted James Burney, a retired Royal Navy captain turned naval historian. Between them, Mitford and Burney drafted forty-seven notes of varying lengths which were appended to the four-canto poem in the published version. Analysis of selected notes reveals the tensions between the sensibilities of the poet and the historian, and raises questions about gender, generational, educational, and philosophical differences in the collaboration. These differences helped to shape the balance between romance and history in the emerging literature of the South Pacific. Figure 2. The Fleet of Otaheite, assembled at Oparee. After William Hodges, Review of the War Galleys at Tahiti (c.1766). Richard Bentley and Sons, London, 1883. Private Collection.BURNEY JOURNALVOLUME 20 Figure 1. Mary Russell Mitford, engraved by James Thomson. The New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, vol.48 no. 7 (July 1831). Private collection.SILLGRATEFUL ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
June 10, 2025 at 6:58 AM
burneyjournal.bsky.social
They're alive! Vol 20 of the Burney Journal is now winging its way to our Society officers. If you're a member of the Society, you can expect to soon receive your copy at the Annual Conference, the Southampton Symposium, or in the post. And the open access digital files will go online this week!
June 6, 2025 at 5:15 PM