Author: BURNEY (Charles). D'ARBLAY (Madame):
Title: Memoirs of Doctor Burney, from Family Papers, and from Personal Recollections.
Description: London: Edward Moxon..., 1832 FIRST EDITION. 3 volumes. 8vo, 212 x 130 mms., pp. xvi, 360;[iv], 400; [iv], 436 [437 printer's imprint, 438 - 440 adverts], lacking half titles, contemporary half calf, freen morocco labels, marbled boards (slightly rubbed), but a good to very good set. Charles Burney began composing his "memoirs" in August, 1782, and added to them as the years progressed. Fanny Burney, as is well known and by her own admission "committed to the Flames" most of his work, a suppression that she tried to justify on grounds of her father's supposed senility. The work is not, of course, reliable as a guide to her father's life, and much of its interest and usefulness lies in the reasons for her demonstrable dishonesty in misrepresenting her motives for destroying his papers. As Roger Lonsdale notes in his biography of Charles Burney, Fanny "devotes more space to the appearance of her own novels than to that of her father's works.... The Memoirs of Dr. Burney can indeed be taken as Fanny's last novel."

Keywords: biography music prose


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