DArblay

D'Arblay, Madame, originally Miss Frances Barney, second daughter of Dr. Burney, a novelist, was born at Lynn Regis, Norfolk, in 1752. Commencing to write very early, at the age of fifteen, she destroyed all her first essays, but in 1778 her novel Evelina proved a marked success, was favourably criticised, and became the talk of the town. Johnson, Mrs. Thrale, Burke, and Reynolds accorded it unstinted praise, and her name as a gifted authoress was fully established. For her second work, Cecilia, revised by Dr. Johnson, she received two thousand pounds from the publisher, and its popularity exceeded, if possible, that of its predecessor. In 1786 she obtained and held for five years the post of one of the Keepers of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, but at the end of that time resigned owing to ill-health, and in 1793 married Count D'Arblay, a French officer. She died at Bath in 1840 in her eighty-eighth year. Her other principal works are Camilla, a Picture of Youth, sold for three thousand pounds, The Wanderer; or, Female Difficulties, Memoirs of her father, and her Diary, the last valuable for the light it throws upon court life of that period.