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Jane Austen was inspired by Fanny Burney. To such a degree that the famous phrase Pride and Prejudice first appeared in Cecilia. Austen later made that particular phrase immortal. Catherine Morland, the wonderful heroine of Austen's Northanger Abbey, even reads Cecilia and praises it to the skies.

It's easy to see why.

While Cecilia is a melodramatic tale filled with ill-timed declarations of love, suicidal moneylenders, pretentious lords, many faintings and even nights spent in fever-induced ravings, it is at its core a very forward-thinking novel about a woman who cannot marry, because she needs to keep her last name in order to inherit her fortune.

What does a last name signify? Quite a lot, if you read through this novel. Cecilia is almost denied love entirely because a last name not only is associated with identity or family history; but honor and the obligation to immortalize the man's family as well. Cecilia is almost obliged to throw all of this - and her inheritance - away in order to satisfy society's expectations.

This powerful message lies beneath a satiric portrait of the upper class in 1800's London. Burney paints London in vivid colours and creates an absolutely mesmerizing view of a metropolitan city in the middle of the industrial revolution. The characters that populates this London of the past are equally hilarious and infuriating. Burney masters this comic balance to perfection.

The title character Cecilia is a true saint; a little too naive for her own good and quite prone to fainting but as a symbol of purity, she works quite well. She is surrounded by such a comic cast of characters; the silly-minded Mrs. Harrell, the even more naive Mr. Arnott, the raving and almost unintelligible Mr. Briggs and the brilliant Delvile-family, lead by the young Mortimer who is as passionate as Cecilia is pure. God, I loved them all. After all, I did spent a 1000 pages in their company.

Burney doesn't master the depth of her characters as well as Austen; but she is able to invent and describe them as well as Dickens.

While Cecilia is a rather long novel, it is worth every single page. It could certainly have been concluded faster � but what's the fun in that? I enjoyed every single page; it's one of those book you live in while you read.

�Her next solicitude was to furnish herself with a well-chosen collection of books: and this employment, which to a lover of literature, young and ardent in its pursuit, is perhaps the mind's first luxury, proved a source of entertainment so fertile and delightful that it left her nothing to wish.�