Author: BURNEY, Frances
Biography:
BURNEY, Frances (1776-1828: ancestry.co.uk)
Tragic Dramas is often catalogued as by the novelist Frances Burney (1752-1840), later D’Arblay. The preface makes clear that the author was a niece of Frances Burney. Frances Burney had many siblings and many nieces and nephews but just one had her name. She was the daughter of Esther or Hester (known as Hetty) Burney (1749-1832) and her husband Charles Rousseau Burney (1747-1819), a cousin. They had married at St. Paul’s, Covent Garden in London, on 20 Sept. 1770. Highfill states that they had ten children. Their daughter Frances was baptised at St. Giles in the Fields, Holborn, London, in Feb. 1776. Esther Burney was the eldest child of Dr. Charles Burney and Esther Sleepe whom he subsequently married. Dr. Burney was a music teacher and author. Both of Frances’s parents were musicians—they excelled at playing the harpsichord—and Charles Rousseau Burney gradually took over teaching Dr. Burney’s pupils in London. They were known for concerts given at their home in Great Titchfield Street. Charles Rousseau Burney was living in Bath when he died on 23 Sept. 1819; he was buried in St. John the Baptist churchyard at Batheaston. Frances, who never married, died on 28 Mar. 1828 and was buried in the same cemetery on 4 Apr. 1828. (Her mother, Hetty, was also buried there after her death on 17 Feb. 1832.) She had made a will in 1807; it was proved on 23 May 1828 and left her assets to her siblings. (ancestry.co.uk 2 Sept. 2023; ODNB [for Frances Burney, later D’Arblay]; Highfill) SR