Frances Burney

Cecilia. Frances Burney

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 at least 51 editions. Cecilia, or Memoirs of an Heiress was published in July 1782. Frances Burney began working on the novel in 1780, after her father, Dr. Charles Burney, and her literary mentor, Samuel Crisp, suppressed her play entitled The Witlings. 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. 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 colored the tone and content of Cecilia. It seems that the Cecilia Stanley of The Witlings became the Cecilia Beverley of Cecilia.