Frances Burney, better known as Fanny Burney, was a novelist, diarist, and playwright who lived in Queen Square between 1770 and 1774.
Her first novel, “Evelina“, had a female protagonist - groundbreaking enough at the time - who's raised in the countryside until she is 17 when she is introduced to London society, and must learn to navigate the complexities of 18th century high society and it's masculine values. These days we would describe her novels as satire.
Such was her impact on British fiction, including on writers like Jane Austen, that Virginia Woolf described her as the mother of English fiction.
Amongst her many other jobs, Fanny Burney was “Keeper of the Robes” to Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, George III's queen.
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