One day in 1790, outside St George's Chapel, Windsor, Frances Burney, Keeper of the Robes to Queen Charlotte at the Court of George III, encountered James Boswell. He was there to beg from her materials for his Life of Dr Johnson. 'We saluted with mutual glee', she wrote; 'his comic-serious face and manner have lost nothing of their wonted singularity.' He began by demanding that she resign her position at Court - 'it won't do, ma'am!' - but soon moved onto his main mission: 'I want your help', he declared, 'you must give me some of your choice little notes of the Doctor's; we have seen him long enough upon stilts; I want to show him in a new light.' She tells him she doesn't have them to hand, but he persists and persists, until they reach the railings of the Queen's lodge. Now, Boswell begins to read a letter of Johnson to himself, 'in strong imitation of the Doctor's manner', which Burney, in other circumstances, might have enjoyed.

This incident was not written up for publication. Like Boswell, the other great life-writer of the age, Burney wrote about her own experiences copiously, even obsessively, and, like Boswell, she collected famous 'characters' and incidents. Like Boswell, she took notes, though not, as he did, on the spot. Instead - and throughout her life - she seems to have written brief 'memoranda' on scraps of paper, which served to jog her memory when she wrote them up, often shortly afterwards, but sometimes much later.