This volume contains the final letters of Charles Burney from 1810, when he was 84, to 1814, when he died at the age of 88. Throughout these years, he was confined to his rooms at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea, where he continued to occupy the post of organist, although for many years he had paid a deputy to carry out his duties. Formerly a prolific author and composer, he no longer sought to publish either words or music. He remained, however, an active correspondent almost until the end of his long life, writing to friends and family members primarily about musical and literary matters. He was also much concerned with contemporary politics, and rejoiced over each British military and naval victory in the protracted Napoleonic wars. Burney delighted in looking back to his earlier years: telling his correspondents about his former life as a friend of Samuel Johnson and as a European traveller, meeting literary and musical celebrities in Italy, France, and Germany. His recollections could be factually unreliable, but they are written with his customary verve.
The volume also contains four Appendices, supplementing the main run of letters in various ways. The first of these provides fifteen letters discovered since the publication of Volumes I and III of the series, of which the most important are five letters of 1783 from Burney to Jacques-Pierre Brissot de Warville, the French philosopher and later leader of the Girondins in France, then living in London. The second Appendix contains an annotated transcription of Burney's will, printed here from the holograph, rather than the scribal copy. Appendix III contains six letters recounting Burney's death, all by members of his family and three of them written within a day of the event. A fourth Appendix prints the full and generally accurate obituary of Burney published in two issues of the
Gentleman's Magazine: April and July 1814. In addition, there is an alphabetical list of correspondents for all six volumes of
The Letters of Dr Charles Burney.
