Today our thread on #KingsLynn's famous historical faces will be looking at Frances (Fanny) Burney. Despite being unable to read or write aged 8, Frances went on to become a celebrated novelist, diarist & playwright. #FamousFaces 
Frances was born in #KingsLynn on 13th June 1752. She was the 2nd daughter of Charles Burney & Esther Sleepe. Her father was a talented musician & composer who was the organist at St. Margaret’s Church (@KingsLynnMinstr) & taught music to the daughters of wealthy Lynn merchants.
Aged 16 Frances began writing a diary and went on to record events from the reign of George III through to the early Victorian age. In this diary she made rather unflattering comments about the Lynn merchant elite!
In her diary Frances Burney recorded her encounters with many famous people of the period, including Samuel Johnson & James Boswell. She also recounted the terrifying experience of being chased around @kewgardens by George III on 2nd February 1789.
Frances’ stepmother, Elizabeth Allen of #KingsLynn, disapproved of women writing, but in 1778 her first novel, Evelina, was published anonymously. When Frances’ identity was discovered she became the first woman to make writing novels respectable.
Frances’ third novel, Camilla, was published in 1796 and the subscription list included Miss J. Austen!
Frances spent 5 years as the Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte (her leaving gift, a watch, is @Lynn_Museum). After this she met & married Alexandre-Jean-Baptiste Piochard d'Arblay, a former French soldier, but her father refused to attend the wedding.
In 1802 the d'Arblays & their son moved to France, but war between Britain and France meant they were stuck there for 10 years. In 1811 Frances underwent a mastectomy without anaesthesia, which she recorded in vivid detail in a letter to her sister.
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The d'Arblays returned to France in 1815, when Alexandre d'Arblay became involved in the fight against Napoleon. Frances refused to flee Brussels when there were rumours that Napoleon had won the Battle of Waterloo. She then spent weeks nursing wounded British soldiers.
After the death of her husband in 1818, Frances focused on writing her father’s biography & editing the record she had kept of her own life. The Diary and Letters of Madame d'Arblay were published after her death in Bath, aged 87, on 6th January 1840.
Frances Burney only saw one of her plays produced during her lifetime, as women writing for the theatre was strongly discouraged – her father certainly objected to many of her plays. It wasn’t until 1995 that all but two of her plays were published for the first time.
