Recommendations
Books Like Camilla
Best books to read after Camilla by Fanny Burney
Readers who love Camilla — Burney's most ambitious novel of the impulsive, feeling heroine whose good heart and bad judgment bring her to the edge of social and financial catastrophe — will enjoy these works of social comedy, the literature of sensibility, and the great tradition of women's fiction in English.
- 1Buy
Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
The Austen novel most directly descended from Camilla — Marianne Dashwood's impulsive sensibility and its near-catastrophic consequences are the direct heir to Camilla Tyrold's impulsive goodness; Austen had read Camilla and the debt is acknowledged.
- 2Buy
Cecilia
by Fanny Burney
The predecessor that illuminates Camilla's ambitions — Cecilia's more controlled social navigation is what Burney refined into Camilla's more complex and morally nuanced portrait; reading Cecilia first shows Burney's development.
- 3Buy
Evelina
by Fanny Burney
Burney's first novel and most immediately accessible work — Evelina's spontaneous comic social education is the precursor to Camilla's more complex trials; reading all three in order shows the full arc of Burney's development.
- 4Buy
Emma
by Jane Austen
Emma Woodhouse's confident social judgment — right in its energy, wrong in its specific applications — is the Austenian transformation of Camilla's impulsiveness; both heroines are brilliant women who nearly destroy their own happiness through an excess of feeling and confidence.
- 5Buy
The Sorrows of Young Werther
by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The Continental classic of uncontrolled sensibility — Werther's passionate excess and its fatal consequences is the German equivalent of the tradition Burney is exploring in Camilla; reading both shows the European dimension of the literature of sensibility.
- 6Buy
Pamela
by Samuel Richardson
The literary ancestor of Burney's tradition — Richardson's creation of the epistolary novel of female virtue tested by male power is the foundation on which Burney built; Pamela's Virtue is the eighteenth-century version of what Camilla embodies and what Burney complicates.
- 7Buy
The Man of Feeling
by Henry Mackenzie
The male counterpart to Camilla in the literature of sensibility — Harley's excessive emotional responses to suffering and injustice are the male equivalent of Camilla's emotional excess; reading both shows how the literature of feeling operated across gender lines.
- 8Buy
North and South
by Elizabeth Gaskell
The Victorian social novel that most fully inherits Burney's concerns — Margaret Hale's intelligent, feeling navigation of an industrial world she did not choose, her prejudices corrected through experience, is the Victorian development of what Burney was exploring in Camilla.
More Camilla Resources
More Reading Recommendations
View all →Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.