Cecilia 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. The novel is a panoramic novel of eighte­enth-century London. Controversial in its time, this eighteenth-century novel seems entirely fresh in relation to late twenti­eth-century concerns.