Emphasizing Frances Burney's professionalism and her courage, Janice Farrar Thaddeus shows the protean writer who recognised her abilities and exercised them, always carefully shaping her career. Though now frequently depicted as retiring, even fearful, Burney forced on her reading public themes they were scarcely ready for, flamboyantly mixing genres, writing comically about intimate violence. Not content in old age to be merely a literary icon, she privately recorded with increasing clarity the moments when the world lacerates the self.

Janice Farrar Thaddeus is Senior Lecturer and Director of Studies, History and Literature, Harvard University.