Sterne, and the Novel of His Times. The Age of Johnson. Columbia Encyclopedia World Factbook American Heritage Coll. The Age of Johnson. Sterne, and the Novel of His Times .
Spontaneity is among the best gifts of the novelist.
And few novelists are more spontaneous than Fanny Burney. We should have guessed this from the novels themselves. In the Diary, as in the novels, the two gifts are intertwined beyond possibility of separation. The observation which enabled her to take in the passing scene, to seize the distinctive features of every man and woman she met, may have put the material in her hands. But the material would have lost half its effect, it would have lost more than half its charm, if the genius of the born story-teller had not been there to weave it into a coherent whole, to give it life and movement.