Romanticising the Robinsonade: Sarah Harriet Burney's The Shipwreck (1820).

Abstract

There are not many critical studies on Sarah Harriet Burney (1772-1844), the half-sister of the acclaimed English novelist Frances Burney (1752-1840). Though in the first half of the nineteenth century she was widely read and translated into French and German, most Burney scholars have neglected her works which are worth analysing as representatives of pre-Victorian literature by women. The aim here is to rediscover a totally forgotten tale, The Shipwreck, which appeared in Tales of Fancy (1920) and shares many traits with Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). Sarah Harriet Burney feminises the genre by introducing a romantic plot and directing all her attention to social prejudice and female virtue