The Romance of Private Life (1839) represents a culmination of the literary career of Sarah Harriet Burney (1772–1844). Overshadowed in her lifetime and since by the reputation of her half-sister, she was a writer of talent whose novels were enjoyed by Jane Austen and preferred by some readers to those of Frances Burney. The two tales that make up her last work, published within a few years of her death, bring into focus the themes and ideas which preoccupied her throughout her lifetime.

Sarah Harriet Burney was born on 29 August 1772 in King's Lynn, Norfolk, the second of two children of Charles Burney and Elizabeth Allen. Her father was forty-six and her mother forty-four when she was born; the marriage was a second one for both parents after a first spouse had died. With one brother four years older, she had three half-siblings on her mother's side and six on her father's, the closest in age being more than ten years older. Born in the same year as her eldest niece, Sarah Harriet essentially grew up with the next generation. The large blended family remained an important network throughout her life but also a source of conflict which is reflected in her fiction.

Her earliest years were spent in Norfolk with her mother's family. In one of her novels, a shy child traumatized by the loss of a grandmother is introduced into a lively family, an incident which may be based on memories of arriving in London in 1775 to join her father's household. ‘Little Sally is come home, & is one of the most innocent, artless, queer little things you ever saw’, wrote Frances Burney. Luxuriant hair was the best feature of her appearance which was not otherwise prepossessing, as she was ruefully aware.

The household in St Martin's Street was a busy one. Her father's career was blossoming, helped by the publication of his tours and History of Music (1776); a fashionable teacher of music, he entertained celebrities in his home with informal concerts that must have created a stir, even for a child in the nursery. Her half-brother, Captain James Burney, served in the navy, appearing at home on leave.