Title: Frances Burney, dramatist
First published: 1997
Description: The position Frances Burney (1752-1840) holds as a novelist, journalist, and letter-writer is now undisputed, thanks to reevaluations of the canon in recent years. Yet she was always intrigued by, and wrote for, the stage.

Though only one of Burney's dramas was performed in her lifetime, Barbara Darby places the plays in the context of performance and feminist theory, challenging past assertions about Burney that were based entirely on her novels and journals. Darby maintains that in exposing the failure of such practices and institutions as courtship, marriage, family, government, and the church, Burney's dramas often exceed her novels in the depth of their social commentary.

Frances Burney, Dramatist expands our appreciation of the extent to which eighteenth-century women playwrights used the stage as a forum for exploring issues of gender.
Subjects: History, Feminism and literature, Dramatic works, Women and literature, Women in the theater, Burney, fanny, 1752-1840, Women and theater - history & criticism, Feminist literary criticism, English fiction & prose literature - 18th century - literary criticism, Women in entertainment & media, Feminism & literature
Places: England
People: Fanny Burney (1752-1840)
Time periods: 18th century
LC classification: PR3316.A4 Z6424 1997