ABSTRACT
Frances Burney's literary output will never cease to impress. Having written her first texts already in adolescence and published the final piece at the age of 80, she left a monumental record of almost a century, documenting, just like Horace Walpole had done before, not only her life but also the times. A daughter of the renowned musicologist Dr. Charles Burney, she was not only exposed to the practice of the arts, both at home and in the town, but was also part of her father's intellectual circle including, among others, Samuel Johnson, Edmund Burke and, most importantly from the author's perspective, Sir Joshua Reynolds. The Bildungsroman pattern demands that the heroine become a complete and distinct entity, a somebody. And so she does towards the end of the narrative, when she is finally recognised and accepted by her father Sir John Belmont.
