On the 250th anniversary of her birth, the novelist Fanny Burney will today be accorded the rare honour of a memorial window in Poets' Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Paula Stepankowsky, president of the Burney Society, ruefully admits the most common public reaction will probably be "who?".
Burney was one of the most successful writers of her day, author of the bestseller Evelina (1778), a friend of Samuel Johnson, and a significant influence on generations of later writers - including Jane Austen, who acknowledged the debt.
The site of her grave in Bath has been lost, and she is now little read, though there are signs that situation may be changing: a two day conference in London to mark the anniversary is oversubscribed.
"It's hard to overestimate the success of Evelina - it was the Bridget Jones's Diary of her day. But her heroine is also without precedent because she is living in contemporary society, and developing throughout the book.
"There's nothing like it among the work of her contemporaries - I know, because I've read them," said Ms Stepankowsky. She is an American financial journalist who founded the society five years ago with another American and a Canadian.
When Burney is remembered at all, it is usually for her letters and diaries, published after her death. She recorded the dramas of her own life, including a detailed description of undergoing a mastectomy without anaesthetic, and her elation when Johnson praised Evelina. "I think I should love Dr Johnson for such lenity to a poor mere worm in literature, even if I were not myself the identical grub he has obliged."
Unlike Jane Austen she was living in London society, and witnessing moments of history. On August 2 1786 she recorded an assassination attempt on George III at St James's, by a woman presenting a petition.
"She presented it with her right hand; and at the same moment the King bent forward to take it, she drew from it, with her left hand, a knife which she aimed straight at his heart! ... the King started back, scarce believing the testimony of his own eyes; and the woman made a second thrust, which just touched his waistcoat before he had time to prevent her."
The woman was seized by the crowd, "when the King, the only calm and moderate person then present, called aloud to the mob, 'The poor creature is mad! - Do not hurt her! She has not hurt me!'" She will be the only 18th century woman writer represented in Poets' Corner. Jane Austen published in the 19th century, and the 17th century Aphra Behn, the first to earn her living by writing, has a humble memorial in the cloister.
