'Dazzling... full of special delights. Harman excels in the vivid presentation of scenes, the selection of detail... [a] marvellous and beautifully written book' Elspeth Barker, Independent on Sunday

On 13 June 1767, her fifteenth birthday, Fanny Burney made a bonfire of all her works, 'with the sincere intention to extinguish for ever in their ashes her scribbling propensity'. Fanny was genuinely worried that she might turn into an author, a fate incompatible - for a woman - with respectability.

Her hope was in vain. Not only was she to write four novels (Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla and The Wanderer), all of which are still in print, but she also kept a voluminous diary for the next 70 years and was a prolific letter-writer. Daughter of the eminent music historian Dr Charles Burney; editor of his infamous Memoirs; friend of Sheridan, Garrick, Burke, Boswell and Johnson; second keeper of the robes to George III's Queen Charlotte; wife to a refugee French aristocrat; detained for ten years in revolutionary France; victim of a mastectomy without anaesthetic... Fanny Burney's life was as eventful as any novel.