“The Mother of English Fiction”

		Fanny Burney (1752 – 1840) On this day in 1840 Fanny Burney died. Burney’s four novels have earned her favorable comparisons to other giants of the genre-Austen, Richardson, Dickens-and Virginia Woolf’s declaration that she is “the mother of English fiction.” If a best-seller and a celebrity in her own day, it is as a diarist that Burney is now best known-one who was eye-witness to The Madness of King George, and who enlivened the later years of Samuel Johnson.

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