WELCOME TO THE WEBSITE OF THE
BURNEY SOCIETY UK
We aim to promote the work of the writer Frances Burney (1752-1840) her family and wider circle through providing our Research Bursary and by supporting students by providing them with a 50% reduction to our conferences and symposiums. We are a literary Society based in the UK but membership is open to anyone with an interest in the Burney family and their work. Members receive quarterly newsletters, back editions of which are available via the menu above. We have a close connection to the North American Burney Society and the Burney Centre at McGill University, Montreal. Our members also receive digital copies of The Burney Letter and have access to digital copies of The Burney Journal.
LATEST NEWS
Upcoming Events
2025 – 7 April. Free Member’s visit to Heinz Archive, National Portrait Gallery to view Burney related materials with Curator.
See Conference page of website for details
2025 – 31 April Closing date for paper proposals for Burney Symposium – proposal forms and further details on Conference Page.
9 July 2025 One day in-person Symposium in Southampton
For full details, proposal and registration form, please see Conference page of website. Thanks Trudie.
9 July 2025 – Launch of 2025 – 2026 Research Bursary
9 July 2025 – AGM
PAST EVENTS
2024 Conference
13th – 15 June 2024 Conference at Greenwich Old Royal Naval College.
We are delighted to announce that at this conference we will be celebrating 30 years since the Founding of the Burney Society. Founder members Paula Stepankowsky and Elaine Bander are travelling over from America and Canada respectively, to celebrate this anniversary with us. Please see the Conference page of this website for further details and a booking form.
13 June 2024 at 7pm: FREE RECITAL OF MUSIC COMPOSED BY CHARLES BURNEY in the Hardy Suite, 2nd floor, Trafalgar Tavern, Park Row, Greenwich, London, SE10 9NW. Introduction by Prof Rachel Cowgill (University of York). Performed by Antonia Thwaites with harpsichord accompaniment.
30th Anniversary conference Dinner
We invite all members and friends to join us for the 30th Anniversary conference dinner at the Trafalgar Tavern, Hardy Suite, overlooking the River Thames, adjacent to Queen Anne Building, Old Royal Naval College. This will be preceded by a Prosecco toast to celebrate the 30th year since the Founding of the Burney Society, which is complementary. If you choose to stay for Dinner we are offering a two- course ‘Starter & Dessert’ menu for £20, a two- course ‘Main plus Starter Or Dessert’ for £35, and a three-course menu for £45 per head.
Booking form and payment details can be found on the Conference page of this website.
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Burney Society UK Research Bursary
The 2023 – 2024 Research Bursary Winner, Hannah Wilson, a doctoral student at the University of Cambridge, will give a paper at the Greenwich conference on Thursday 13 June. At the 2024 AGM (9:15 – 11.30 on 15 June 2024 in QA038, Queen’s Anne Building, University of Greenwich, Old Royal Naval College, Greenwich) Hannah will also report back on how the Burney Society UK Research Bursary helped her with her research. This will be followed by the announcement of the 2024 Research Bursary winner by Dr. Sophie Coulombeau, and the launch of the 2024 – 2025 Research Bursary. Please see Annual General Meeting and Conference pages of this website for further details.
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2023 Visits and News
Burney Society UK Summer Outing to Queen’s Gallery Exhibition ‘Style & Society: Dressing the Georgians’ on 1st June 2023
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Updates on Previous News Items
Frances Burney Photography competition (Closed 22 January 2023)
In conjunction with Prof Francesca Saggini’s sell-out talk at Leatherhead Library, Surrey Library Service announced the a photographic competition. The winner and runners up were announced at Francesca’s follow up talk on 2 February 2023.
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The Burney Journal online
We are delighted to announce that current and past copies of The Burney Journal are now available online via https://www.mcgill.ca/burneycentre/burney-society/burney-journal/past-issues
Burney Society UK 2022 Conference and AGM
Many thanks to all who attended the 2022 AGM & our 10 – 16 June 2022 Conference ‘Windows on the Burneys’, especially the speakers who contributed such excellent papers. The papers by student speakers, who were eligible for the President’s Prize, were so strong that the sub-committee felt they should split the award. A President’s Prize of £100 was awarded to Kristin Zodrow, for her paper ‘Narrative Tides: Epistolarity and Astronomy in Frances Burney’s Evelina‘. A Conference Prize of £100 was awarded to Ariella Kharasch for her paper ‘Jews as the Other in Cecilia or Memoirs of an Heiress‘.
A Conference report and reviews are now available on the conference page of this website.
Trudie Messent, 2022 Conference Organiser
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13 June 2022 – 12 June 2023 Membership
Many thanks to all of you who have already renewed your membership. Those who have yet to renew can download a membership form from https://burneysociety.uk/membership
Please email all forms plus your payment details to Trudie at ukburneysociety@gmail.com or post forms and cheques, made payable to ‘Burney Society UK’ to The Burney Society UK, c/o Trudie Messent, 11 Beaconsfield Road, Claygate, Esher, Surrey KT10 0PN England
Whilst we offer payment by PayPal, our preferred methods of payment are by cheque or bank transfer.
Trudie Messent, Burney Society UK Secretary
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Research Project on Charles Burney Junior
We are very pleased to announce that, following the decision at the 2021 AGM to allocate society funding to the research project put forward by Sophie Coulombeau, this project has also received funding from the Burney Society of North America and the University of York. Sophie presented a paper co-written by her research associate Daniel Waterfield at our 2022 conference. Further details of this project are available on the ‘BURNEY SCHOLARSHIP’ page.
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2021- 2022 Burney Society UK Research Bursary
The 2021 – 2022 winner of our £300 Research Bursary, Catherine Pocock, a PhD candidate at Sheffield University, reported on her research into the publishing experience of Frances Burney at the 2022 conference in her paper, ‘Frances Burney d’Arblay: A case study of women’s publishing experience in eighteenth-century Britain’.
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Previous Burney related events:
29th April 2021. Dr Cassie Ulph gave a talk (which is currently still available via Streatham Society YouTube) ‘Remembering Hester Thrale Piozzi, 200 years’. Organised by the Streatham Society. (May only be for those who enrolled – but you could try) ‘
The death of Hester Piozzi on 2 May 1821 marked the end of an era, with the loss of an intellectual and social force associated with some of the most famous names in literary London. During her years as Mrs Thrale, mistress of Streatham Park, she had hosted some of the most feted writers of her day, including Samuel Johnson and Frances Burney. As Mrs Piozzi, she embraced a new career as a writer of travel memoirs, biography, history, and more. This talk marks the bicentenary of her death by exploring the fascinating life of the woman known to many as ‘Dr Johnson’s Mrs Thrale’. As Mrs Piozzi, she often looked back on her Streatham years which represented both a period of great intellectual activity but also the restrictions of her first marriage to the brewer Henry Thrale. This talk will focus particularly on how the ‘Mrs Thrale’ we remember today was shaped by those crucial years at Streatham, and how Hester Piozzi herself would remember and retell her Streatham years in her later writing. It will also briefly touch on some of the projects taking place in Piozzi studies today, as renewed interest in her literary work sees her finally stepping out of the shadow of her illustrious guests.’
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Livestream Reading of Frances Burney’s The Woman Hater was held on Monday 25 January 2021 at 7.30pm EDT (New York) (0.30 am Tuesday 26 January in UK)
Reviewed by Miriam Al Jamil in our Spring 2021 Newsletter.
There was also an interactive discussion of the play and its themes with director, Everett Quinton, scholar Tara K. Menon, and members of the company.
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2020 Burney Society UK AGM was held online via Zoom on 3rd October 2020 at 14:00 UK time. AGM Draft Minutes and the Amended Constitution are available on the Annual General Meeting page.
Sian Ejiwunmi-Le Berre gave an excellent talk after the AGM. Sian has kindly allowed us to upload the text of the talk, in addition to the Studio script of her play ‘When Fanny met Germaine’ on our AGM page.
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23 November 2019 Professor Francesca Saggini Talk ‘Below and Beyond. On Re-Reading Burney’s Biographies’. Women’s Sudies Group 1558- 1837 Seminar Series at The Foundling Museum.
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5 November 2019 Dr Deborah Jones Talk ‘The Brilliant Burneys’ For an online interview related to this talk please see link: https://www.yourvalleynews.co.
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13th October 2019 Professor Jocelyn Harris: ‘Satire, Celebrity and Politics in Jane Austen’ at Chawton House, sponsored by The Burney Society UK
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30 July – 1 August 2019 Conference of the Burney Society (UK) Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, organised by Dr. Cassie Ulph. See Conference page.
29 July 2019 AGM held after conference See AGM page