Peter Sabor

The Burneys, with their letter-journals, novels, travelogues, book-collecting, people-collecting, musicality and artistry, were an exceptional clan, the diversity of their talents and the broad range of their adventures serving as a microcosm of eighteenth-century life.

Fanny had little or no musical talent […]. She was the quiet and retiring middle child who allows her siblings to
shine rather than competing with them for attention and praise.