IN: Frances Burney (13 June 1752 - 6 January 1840), also known as Fanny Burney and after her marriage as Madame d'Arblay, was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. She was born in Lynn Regis, now King's Lynn, England, on 13 June 1752, to the musician and music historian Dr Charles Burney (1726-1814) and his first wife, Esther Sleepe Burney (1725-1762). The third of her mother's six children, she was self-educated and began writing what she called her "scribblings" at the age of ten. In 1793, aged 41, she married a French exile, General Alexandre D'Arblay.

The first entry in her journal was made on 27 March 1768, addressed to "Nobody". It was to extend over 72 years. A talented storyteller with a strong sense of character, Burney often wrote these "journal-diaries" as a form of correspondence with family and friends, recounting to them events from her life and her observations upon them. Her diary contains the record of her extensive reading in her father's library, as well as the visits and behaviour of the various important arts personalities who came to their home. Frances and her sister Susanna were particularly close, and it was to this sister that Frances would correspond throughout her adult life, in the form of such journal-letters. Burney was fifteen by the time her father remarried in 1767. Entries in her diaries suggest that she was beginning to feel pressure to give up her writing, as something "unladylike" that "might vex Mrs. Allen." Feeling that she had transgressed what was proper, she burnt that same year her first manuscript, The History of Caroline Evelyn, which she had written in secret. Despite this repudiation of writing, Frances kept up her diaries and in them wrote an account of the emotions that led up to that dramatic act. She eventually recouped some of the effort that went into the first manuscript by using it as a foundation for her first novel, Evelina, which follows the life of the fictional Caroline Evelyn's daughter. In keeping with this sense of impropriety that Burney felt towards her own writing, she savagely edited earlier parts of her diaries in later life, destroying much of the material. Editors Lars Troide and Joyce Hemlow recovered some of this obscured material while researching their late 20th-century editions of the journals and letters.

So she never actually sent the letters?

OUT: Frances and her sister Susanna were particularly close, and it was to this sister that Frances would correspond throughout her adult life, in the form of such journal-letters.

IN: Aesop ( EE-sop; Greek: Aisopos, Aisopos; c. 620 - 564 BCE) was a Greek fabulist and storyteller credited with a number of fables now collectively known as Aesop's Fables. Although his existence remains unclear and no writings by him survive, numerous tales credited to him were gathered across the centuries and in many languages in a storytelling tradition that continues to this day. Many of the tales are characterized by animals and inanimate objects that speak, solve problems, and generally have human characteristics.

Aesop may not have written his fables. The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus; Herodotus calls Aesop a "writer of fables" and Aristophanes speaks of "reading" Aesop, but no writings by Aesop have survived. Scholars speculate that "there probably existed in the fifth century [BCE] a written book containing various fables of Aesop, set in a biographical framework." Sophocles in a poem addressed to Euripides made reference to Aesop's fable of the North Wind and the Sun. Socrates while in prison turned some of the fables into verse, of which Diogenes Laertius records a small fragment. The early Roman playwright and poet Ennius also rendered at least one of Aesop's fables in Latin verse, of which the last two lines still exist. The body of work identified as Aesop's Fables was transmitted by a series of authors writing in both Greek and Latin. Demetrius of Phalerum made a collection in ten books, probably in prose (Aisopeion a) for the use of orators, which has been lost. Next appeared an edition in elegiac verse, cited by the Suda, but the author's name is unknown. Phaedrus, a freedman of Augustus, rendered the fables into Latin in the 1st century CE. At about the same time Babrius turned the fables into Greek choliambics. A 3rd-century author, Titianus, is said to have rendered the fables into prose in a work now lost. Avianus (of uncertain date, perhaps the 4th century) translated 42 of the fables into Latin elegiacs. The 4th-century grammarian Dositheus Magister also made a collection of Aesop's Fables, now lost. Aesop's Fables continued to be revised and translated through the ensuing centuries, with the addition of material from other cultures, so that the body of fables known today bears little relation to those Aesop originally told. With a surge in scholarly interest beginning toward the end of the 20th century, some attempt has been made to determine the nature and content of the very earliest fables which may be most closely linked to the historic Aesop.

What did Aesop do as a fabulist?

OUT:
The Aesop Romance claims that he wrote them down and deposited them in the library of Croesus;