Harrel doesn't care about her, and has become silly, worldly, and profligate. Harrel is the husband of Cecilia's childhood friend, Priscilla. She also does not understand why Lady Margaret (Mr. Cecilia notes the sharp behaviour of an old man sitting quietly in the corner. Monckton with his schemes, are also there. Monckton's wife and her poor companion, Miss Bennet, who helps Mr. Belfield, a clever, lively, proud young man who can't settle down. Morrice, a young lawyer who tries to flatter everyone who is important Captain Aresby, who likes to compliment ladies in fancy words and Mr. He is afraid that Cecilia might fall in love or forget him while in London, and warns her continually to be careful of all ‘temptations’. Monckton wants to marry Cecilia as soon as his own wife dies. Monckton has married an old, ugly woman for her money, but secretly regrets his decision after meeting Cecilia-a woman who combines wealth with beauty, youth, and intelligence. Harrel, but is invited first to her friend Mr.

Beverley.Ĭecilia goes to live with one of her three guardians, Mr. A stipulation in her uncle's will requires whomever she marries to take her surname, that is, become Mr. She is an orphan heiress (£3000 a year as soon as she becomes of age, with a smaller personal fortune of £10,000). It seems that the Cecilia Stanley of The Witlings became the Cecilia Beverley of Cecilia.Ĭecilia opens with the beautiful 20-year-old heroine, Cecilia Beverley, saying goodbye to her country home to go on a journey to London. This disappointment and the pressure to produce a second novel in order to capitalize on the success of her first work Evelina, seems to have placed considerable strain on Burney, and may have coloured the tone and content of Cecilia. Her father had concerns that the play, a comedic satire of bluestocking(s), would offend 'real people' whom he depended on for artistic patronage, particularly Elizabeth Montagu. Charles Burney, and her literary mentor, Samuel Crisp, suppressed her play entitled The Witlings. Frances Burney began working on the novel in 1780, after her father, Dr. Background Ĭecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress was published in July 1782. A panoramic novel of eighteenth-century London, Cecilia was highly successful with at least 51 editions. 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.

Title page from the first edition of the first volume of CeciliaĬecilia, subtitled Memoirs of an Heiress, is the second novel by English author Frances Burney, set in 1779 and published in 1782.

Cecilia burney novel