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CECILIA, Volume 1 (of 3)

or

MEMOIRS OF AN HEIRESS



By Frances Burney




PREFACE

"Fanny's Cecilia came out last summer, and is as much liked and read,
I believe, as any book ever was," wrote Charlotte Burney in Jan. 1783.
"She had 250 pounds for it from Payne and Cadell. Most people say she
ought to have had a thousand. It is now going into the third edition,
though Payne owns that they printed two thousand at the first edition,
and Lowndes told me five hundred was the common number for a novel."
[Footnote: _The Early Diary of Frances Burney, with a selection from her
correspondence, and from the journals of her sisters Susan and Charlotte
Burney._ Edited by Annie Raine Ellis. 1889. Vol. II. p. 307.]

The manuscript of _Cecilia_ was submitted to Dr Burney and Mr Crisp
during its composition, and their suggestions were in some cases
adopted, as we learn from the _Diary_. Dr Johnson was not consulted, but
a desire at once to imitate and to please him evidently controlled the
work.

Under these circumstances it is naturally less fresh and spontaneous
than _Evelina_, but it is more mature. The touch is surer and the plot
more elaborate. We cannot to-day fully appreciate the "conflict scene
between mother and son," for which, Miss Burney tells us, the book was
written; but the pictures of eighteenth century affectations are all
alive, and the story is thoroughly absorbing, except, perhaps, in the
last book.

Miss Burney often took the name of her