Fanny (Frances) Burney’s (1752-1840) letters and journals show her, like Mary Delany a generation earlier, as managing to navigate the stifling controls placed on women of her class and time, to find deep happiness in marriage and fulfillment in friendships and writing.

I liked this lifelong cherishing of a pebble for the land it represented.  But what happened to it after Fanny passed away?  Did it get tossed into the garden, or did someone know that she had cherished it, and therefore cherished it themselves?  The story of how things are imbued with story fascinates me, as you will see.

Source: Fanny Burney, Journals and Letters, selected by Peter Sabor & Lars Troide (Harmondsworth: Penguin Classics, 2001), p. 462