Recommendations
Books Like Cecilia
Best books to read after Cecilia by Fanny Burney
Readers who love Cecilia — Burney's five-volume novel of an orphaned heiress navigating fashionable London, the source of Jane Austen's phrase 'pride and prejudice' — will enjoy these works of eighteenth-century women's fiction, social comedy, and the great tradition of the intelligent woman navigating a world that undervalues her.
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Buy on AmazonPride and Prejudice
by Jane Austen
Austen took 'pride and prejudice' directly from Cecilia's climactic paragraph and the Delvile family plot is the direct source for the Darcy/Bennet situation; reading Cecilia first reveals how deeply Austen was indebted to Burney for her greatest novel's central conflict.
- 2
Buy on AmazonEvelina
by Fanny Burney
Burney's first novel and the most immediately accessible of her works — the young Evelina's entry into society is funnier and lighter than Cecilia's more complex navigation; read first to see Burney at her most spontaneous.
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Buy on AmazonCamilla
by Fanny Burney
Burney's third major novel, published fourteen years after Cecilia — longer, more morally complex, and more psychologically demanding; Jane Austen subscribed to it by name and it shows Burney's fully mature style; the natural successor to Cecilia.
- 4
Buy on AmazonBelinda
by Maria Edgeworth
Austen cited Belinda alongside Cecilia as one of the great English novels — Edgeworth's social comedy is in the same tradition as Burney but more explicitly didactic; Lady Delacour is Cecilia's most interesting successor among eighteenth-century female characters.
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Buy on AmazonSense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
The Austen novel that most directly continues Cecilia's themes — the contrast between rational good judgment (Elinor) and passionate feeling (Marianne) in the face of financial and social pressure is the central concern of both novels.
- 6
Buy on AmazonThe Female Quixote
by Charlotte Lennox
The predecessor in the tradition of the satirical novel of female education — Arabella's romance delusions are the comic extreme of the problem Burney is addressing through Cecilia; reading them together traces the tradition of the intelligent woman misled by the models available to her.
- 7
Buy on AmazonEmma
by Jane Austen
The Austen novel whose heroine's confident misreading of the social world most parallels Cecilia's situation — both heroines are intelligent women whose judgment is tested by their social circumstances, and both novels vindicate rational good sense over social pressure.
- 8
Buy on AmazonThe Wanderer
by Fanny Burney
Burney's final novel (1814) — ambitious, dense, and neglected; the story of Juliet Granville's mysterious poverty and gradual vindication is Burney at her most politically radical and her most personally revealing; essential for readers who want the complete Burney.
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