ABSTRACT
This chapter traces the interwoven life writings of Frances Burney and Mary Delany. The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany, edited by Delany’s great great-niece Lady Llanover, was an attempt to recover Delany and her family from the perceived misrepresentations of Burney’s Diary and Letters. Chapter 4 records the impact of letter trading within shared lives and also discusses the court memoir and the recovery of an exemplar woman into domestic womanhood. Llanover effectively initiated a final correspondence with Burney and the life writing she had made public. The chapter begins by positioning the Llanover response through her mother, Georgiana Waddington’s relationship with Burney. The chapter then revisits Delany’s appearance in Burney’s life writing, considering how Llanover used the dynastic technique of aligning Delany with two sets of ancestors as a means of asserting control over the representation of Delany in the marketplace. The chapter explores the issues of direct ripostes to Burney and the public argument with reviewers as well as the wider view of Llanover’s objectives. It finally suggests that Delany herself has been effectively obscured by a text professing to be her own words.
