Frances Burney and her readers : the negotiated image

In Frances Burney and Her Readers, Anna Paluchowska-Messing traces the rugged trajectory marked by the literary career of Frances Burney, the English eighteenth-century novelist, diarist and playwright. The study highlights the techniques Burney employed in her texts for projecting a favourable self-image, and sets them against the changing conventions in culture consumption and appreciation. More broadly, the study addresses the concept of women’s literary celebrity, which in late eighteenth-century England remained at odds with contemporary ideals of feminine respectability and prescribed domesticicity. In Paluchowska-Messing’s representation, Burney’s story showcases the dilemmas an eighteenth-century author must face at different stages of her career from debutante to that of an acclaimed literary figure, and possible solutions she might choose in order to court celebrity without losing respectability