“Her Later Works Happily Forgotten”: Rewriting Frances Burney and Old Age

This essay considers Frances Burney’s last published work, Memoirs of Doctor Burney (1832), for its sustained attention to gender, aging, and authorship. When the Memoirs is read from cover to cover, significant and previously unnoticed patterns emerge that offer new insights into Burney’s conceptions of and ruminations on authorial celebrity in old age. The narration of the Memoirs provides a compelling picture of what an aged woman author was up against in fashioning a persona in her text. Examining the complicated reception of the Memoirs also advances our discussion of Burney’s little read—and too-often misunderstood—late writings. This essay concludes that the Memoirs ought to be revalued for its importance to literary history and feminist aging studies, at the same time providing a new line of inquiry to help us make sense of its supposed failure.