The Letters of Dr Charles Burney: Volume II: 1785-1793

This second volume of the letters of Dr Charles Burney follows directly from the first, published in 1991, and contains roughly two hundred letters written between 1785 and 1793. In these years, Burney consolidated his reputation as a musicologist, publishing his account of the Commemoration of Handel (1785) and completing A General History of Music (1789). Continuing to teach, he had a busy schedule, filled with dinners, assemblies, and concerts.

During these years, Burney moved from St Martin’s Street to the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, where he held the post of organist. He remained active in musical circles, helping to promote foreign musicians and young performers. He welcomed Josef Haydn to London in 1791. As a proprietor of the Pantheon, which burned down in 1792, Burney noted competing efforts to establish a new opera house. He helped organize the musical band taken on Lord Macartney’s embassy to China in 1792. Seeking materials for his research, Burney borrowed manuscripts from George III and corresponded with colleagues in England and abroad.

Burney also discussed literary subjects and contributed to the Monthly Review. A friend of Horace Walpole, he socialized with the Bluestockings. He was a frequent attender at the Literary Club and supplied Boswell with anecdotes of Johnson. Burney writes movingly of the passing of the artist, Sir Joshua Reynolds.

Having married twice, Burney kept in touch with a large family and visited his daughters in Mickleham, Surrey, and Aylmer, Norfolk. He tried to help his son, Charles Burney Jr, restore his reputation (after the disgrace of expulsion from Cambridge) and supported his daughter, Frances, on accepting--and then resigning from--a position in the Queen’s Household. Initially alarmed when she married a penniless French émigré, he soon began to lobby on behalf of French émigré priests and enlisted Frances to pen a pamphlet for the cause. While holding strong views himself, Burney kept friends on both sides of the political divide.

Burney was closely engaged with the musical, literary, scientific, and political circles of his day. Informative and entertaining, his letters add considerably to our knowledge of the man and the age.

Lorna J. Clark

Lorna J. Clark is Research Adjunct Professor at Carleton University and Editor of the Burney Letter. She has published almost fifty articles, essays, or chapters on eighteenth-century women writers, and edited seven scholarly editions. These include two volumes of Court Journals of Frances Burney (OUP, 2014), The Diary of Lucy Kennedy (2015), and the Romance of Private Life (2016). A contributor to the ODNB, the Research Guide to Romantic Women Writers and the MLA Teaching Series, she is currently working on a volume of juvenilia and a biography of Frances Burney.