The Burney Journal

"Grateful acknowledgements to Captain Burney"

Geoffrey Sill — 2025-06-05

In 1811 Mary Russell Mitford published Christina, Maid of the South Seas, a poem which drew inspiration from a report in the Quarterly Review of the discovery of a settlement on Pitcairn Island founded by surviving mutineers from the Bounty. For assistance with the historical notes, she enlisted James Burney, a retired Royal Navy captain turned naval historian. Between them, Mitford and Burney drafted forty-seven notes of varying lengths which were appended to the four-canto poem in the published version. Analysis of selected notes reveals the tensions between the sensibilities of the poet and the historian, and raises questions about gender, generational, educational, and philosophical differences in the collaboration. These differences helped to shape the balance between romance and history in the emerging literature of the South Pacific.

General d’Arblay’s Mementoes of a Military Life

Miriam Al Jamil — 2025-06-05

Later in life, General Alexandre d’Arblay became acutely aware that his wife’s
literary fame might eclipse his own military honors in the eyes of posterity, and he
became anxious that his son Alex should have some evidence of his achievements
after his death. His trip to Paris in 1817 was made in part to have a portrait painted by
Horace Vernet to commemorate his military status. This article examines the portrait,
alongside a panoramic sketch of the field of Waterloo that d’Arblay made, to argue
that the production and curation of these military mementoes were originally intended
to fashion a legacy of his achievements, independent of his wife’s literary fame, for the
benefit of his son.

Cecilia and the Eighteenth-Century Breakfast

Madeline Maya — 2025-06-05

This article explores the tonal, structural and conceptual importance of the breakfast table scene within Frances Burney’s second novel, Cecilia (1782). Building on Sarah Moss’s work exploring ambivalent attitudes to food within Burney’s life writing, I show that within Burney’s fiction the breakfast scene often operates as a site of discomfort, anxiety and entrapment. Moreover, I suggest, in dialogue with other recent readings of Cecilia that have highlighted key scenes as particularly crucial to the novel’s structure, that the breakfast scene acts as a “hinge” (to re-purpose Arnold Palmer’s term), which opens the door on a new character, development, or section of
the plot; it is a narrative signal that an important shift is about to take place.

Brushes with Burney

Sophie Coulombeau — 2025-06-05

Year in Burney Studies 2022-2024

Deborah Barnum — 2025-06-05

Editor's Note