CECILIA

von Frances Burney

Cecilia Beverley is a beautiful 20-year-old heroine, who says goodbye to her country home to go on a journey to London. She is an orphan heiress waiting to inherit large fortune as soon as she becomes of age. A stipulation in her uncle's will requires whomever she marries to take her surname, that is, become Mr. Beverley. She becomes very desirable and she must decide to whom she will give her much coveted hand. Frances Burney (1752-1840) was an English satirical novelist, diarist and playwright. She is best known for her novels Evelina, Cecilia, Camilla and The Wanderer. Burney's novels explore the lives of English aristocrats, and satirize their social pretensions and personal foibles, with an eye to larger questions such as the politics of female identity. She has gained critical respect in her own right, but she also foreshadowed such novelists of manners with a satirical bent as Jane Austen and Thackeray.