… introduced at Court. A year later, she began to patronize Dr Burney’s daughter, the young Frances Burney , whose first novel, Evelina , had made such a splash. Frances, an inveterate diarist, would chronicle many of the debates at … friends but was never at a loss to gather new ones, Italian visitors and writers such as Samuel Rogers as well as the novelists Harriet and Sophia Lee. She formed a lifelong friendship with the great actress, Sarah Siddons, and even tried … hand at playwriting but neither of her attempts ever made it onto the stage. To make money, she contemplated writing a novel instead, but finally settled on British Synonymy (1793), a work of direct interest to the study of …