Cecilia, subtitled Memoirs of an Heiress, is the second novel by English author Frances Burney, set in 1779 and published in 1782. The novel, about the trials and tribulations of a young upper class woman who must negotiate London society for the first time and who falls in love with a social superior, belongs to the genre of the novel of manners.
A panoramic novel of eighteenth-century London, Cecilia was highly successful with.
Plot
| Cecilia opens with the beautiful 20-year-old heroine, Cecilia Beverley, saying goodbye to her country home to go on a journey to London. She is an orphan heiress (£3000 a year as soon as she becomes of age, with a smaller personal fortune of £10,000). A stipulation in her uncle's will requires whomever she marries to take her surname, that is, become Mr. Beverley.
Cecilia goes to live with one of her three guardians, Mr. Harrel, but is invited first to her friend Mr. Monckton's house...|
