While looking about for a couple of useful Burney links, I came across this perturbing story. The scholar Ellen Moody some years ago started a number of online discussions of Burney’s novels. She is obviously a woman of fortitude; most of us would have given up, faced with the resulting torrent of flames, trivia and vicious pranks . But she and her colleagues hung in there long enough to get results. Sample threads are on her site.
Dr Moody concludes her page:
Since the existence of large fan communities generates money and favorable partisan coterie publicity, it is in the interest of anyone who works or becomes involved with any projects involving Austen and (lately increasingly) Burney to begin with an exaggerated respect; any sharp criticism must be presented in somewhat disguised forms.The phenomenon of the cult figure or group of texts is an important one in our era, and we need frank discussion of how different cults arise, what imagined characteristics cult figures are typically endowed with by their fans, what kinds of people become fervent fans of literary writers and their characters, and what is the effect of such cults on serious study of works of the imagination.
We could do all that. Or we could just tip-toe away. They’re making too much noise to notice.