Please note this website is no longer being updated. Please see our new website https://burneysociety.uk/
History. The Burney Society (UK), formed in 1994, is a friendly, non-profit-making literary society, dedicated to the study and celebration of the works of the Burney family, especially Frances Burney d’Arblay (1752-1840), her life, her contemporaries and her times.
We have approximately 80 members, some of whom have Burney family connections. Most members live in the UK, but membership is open to anyone interested in discovering more about the Burneys or getting involved in the society’s activities.
The Burney Society (UK) is closely allied with the North American branch of the Society and supports the work of the Burney Centre at McGill University, Montreal, where the Burney Journals are edited. For more information, visit its website here.
Every June, we have an annual meeting with speakers, which are held in locations with Burney connections: in recent years we have been to Juniper Hall in Surrey, where Frances Burney met her husband Alexandre d’Arblay, to Parham House, in Sussex, where there are portraits and memorabilia, and Chawton House Women’s Library in Hampshire, a beautiful house near Jane Austen’s cottage, which holds first editions of Burney’s work, contemporary illustrations of her novels, and portraits of eighteenth-century women.
Every two to three years The Burney Society arranges a two-day international conference. These events combine scholarship with dramatic and musical entertainments, social events, ceremonies and local tours. The next conference will take place in 2019. (Sophie Coulombeau)
2019 CONFERENCE
The next Burney Society UK Conference will take place in Lincoln in July 2019. Further information will be made available soon.
PAST EVENTS and CONFERENCES
2018: Symposium on 2 July at Dr Johnson’s House, 17 Gough Square, London EC4A 3DE.
2016: Our conference was held at St Chad’s College, Durham, and our theme was ‘Burney and Popular Entertainments: the business of pleasure in Late-Georgian Britain’.
2013: Our conference was held at Gonville & Caius College, Cambridge, and our theme was ‘Education in the Life and Work of Frances Burney and her Family’. It included a day trip to King’s Lynn.
2010: Our conference was held in Paris, where we examined the subject ‘Women under Napoleon’. Our aim was to promote Anglo-French relations and to set Burney’s work in the context of other women writers of the period, both French and English.
2007: The conference in Windsor Castle precincts marked the beginning of the editing of Burney’s Court Journals. A Plaque was unveiled on the Castle walls recording the friendship of Mrs. Delaney and Fanny Burney.
2002: At Westminster we celebrated the 250th anniversary of Burney’s birth, unveiling a window in Poet’s Corner.
2005: In Bath we began with a ceremony following the restoration of the ‘sarcophagus’ in St Swithin’s churchyard which commemorates Frances Burney d’Arblay and her son Alexander.
2002: At Westminster we celebrated the 250th anniversary of Burney’s birth, unveiling a window in Poet’s Corner.
Officers
President: Professor Peter Sabor (McGill University, Montreal)
Chairperson: Miriam Al Jamil
Treasurer/Membership Secretary: Deborah Jones
Communications and Minutes Secretary: Trudie Messent
Committee members: Miriam Al Jamil, Sophie Coulombeau, Deborah Jones, Trudie Messent, Francesca Saggini, Gillian Skinner & Cassie Ulph
Patrons
Jean Bowden, Charles Burney & Kate Chisholm
Publications and Social media
The Burney Society UK Newsletter: Editors, Miriam Al Jamil & Trudie Messent
The Burney Letter: Editor, Lorna Clark
The Burney Journal: Editor, Marilyn Francus
The Burney Society (UK) website: Sophie Coulombeau & Trudie Messent
Visit our Twitter site https://twitter.com/burneysocietyuk?lang=en-gb
Facebook Group: The Burney Society (UK) https://www.facebook.com/groups/474331835923929/
Past Issues of The Burney Society UK Newsletter are available through the links below.
Contact
If you have a Burney-related query – or alternatively, if you have news of an event, conference or publication – please drop us a line at burneysocietyuk@gmail.com
The Burney Society (UK) 