Frances Burney and protective self-erasure in early nineteenth-century Britain

This article examines protective self-erasure in Romantic Britain, using Frances Burney (1752–1840) as a case study of how public figures sought to manage their posthumous reputations. With an expanding celebrity culture and shifts in print publicity heightening concerns about the afterlife of personal documents, figures like Burney became increasingly focused on erasing materials they wished to remain private. By analyzing Burney’s meticulous editing and selective destruction of her personal archive, I argue that self-erasure during this period was not an act of repression but rather a strategic attempt to manage posthumous exposure. Far from an act of submission or feminine diffidence, Burney’s practices represented a proactive effort to balance public visibility with privacy—particularly salient for women navigating the contradictory demands of Romantic celebrity culture. This article complicates prevailing views of erasure as primarily state-driven suppression by foregrounding it as a situated practice of biographical resistance. Finally, I consider how these historical practices resonate with contemporary debates on archival power and the politics of forgetting in the digital age.