Tag Archives: Fanny Burney

Four Favorite Books of 2025

What books do you love that aren’t strictly in the canon? Here is my list of three neglected “older” books and one new novel longlisted for the Booker Prize.

1. The Middle Age of Mrs. Eliot, by Angus Wilson. This neglected novel won the Tait Black Memorial Prize in 1958. You can find a copy online, but I defy you to find it in a bookstore.

Meg Eliot is a bossy, charming middle-aged woman who dominates committees, hosts parties to boost her husband’s career, and organizes a vacation with and for her overworked husband.

And then it happens. During a layover in a third-world country, her husband is shot and killed at an airport. Suddenly she is is penniless, unemployable, and angry at her husband’s quixotic act. (He threw himself in front of a man to save him from an assassination attempt.) She enrolls in secretarial school, but it will be months before she graduates. During this period of living in shabby rooms and trying to find an affordable home, she tries living, separately, with two of her impecunious friends, and alienates them, because she runs everything like a committee.

Meg Eliot is one of my favorite fictional characters. Wilson’s witty dialogue, brilliant prose, and insight into her character makes this a joy to read. Mrs. Eliot seems to change, but does she really?

The best novel I’ve read this year.

2. Audition, by Katie Kitamura. Shortlisted for the Booker Prize, this graceful novel is the most elegant I’ve read this year. The prose is spare, lyrical, precise, and even icy. The narrator is an actress, trying to get her part right in rehearsals. Other characters demand her attention: a young man who may or may not be her son, and a husband who is unfaithful in a shocking betrayal. It’s a complex novel. What is real and what not?

3. The Corner That Held Them, by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Do you like nun novels? This is much better than Rumer Godden’s nun novels, Black Narcissus and In This House of Brede. Set in the Middle Ages, the novel charts the lives of generations of nuns: they endure the Plague, survive wars and pettily fight over politics. The question is often: who will be the next Mother Superior? Beautifully-written, and perhaps an inspiration for Muriel Spark’s The Abbess of Crewe.

4. Cecilia, by Fanny Burney. This month I finished this delightful 18th century novel, from which Jane Austen borrowed the phrase “Pride and Prejudice.” Cecilia, an heiress, struggles for independence, control of her money, and works to deflect unwanted suitors. It’s a great novel, though slightly less great when the marriage plot kicks in. Still, it’s a classic I love and recommend.

And if you can think of any stunning neglected novels, I’d like to add them to my list!

Great Fall Reads: Jane Austen’s “Pride and Prejudice” & Robert Macfarlane’s “Is a River Alive?”

On a recent vacation, I was fascinated by Fanny Burney’s Cecilia, a smart 1,003- page novel about the perils of being rich and female in the 18th century.

And then Burney pointed me in the direction of Jane Austen, when, on page 930, she repeated the phrase PRIDE AND PREJUDICE (all caps) three times.

Yes, Jane Austen took the clever title from Burney’s Cecilia.

Pride and Prejudice is Austen’s most popular novel, and perhaps it is her best. Austen herself said modestly that P&P was “rather too light & bright & sparkling,” but her fans are enraptured by the romantic comedy and witty dialogue.

She borrows tropes from her favorite 18th-century novels and adapts then neatly to fit domestic fiction. But she is never conventional: she veers off course during love scenes, or, in Mansfield Park, goes so far as to make Edmund, who is the closest thing to a hero in the book, so indifferent to Fanny that we almost prefer his rakish rival. In P&P, Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy are so mismatched that Elizabeth’s father and her older sister can’t believe it when she says they’re engaged.

In a way, I know what they mean, but it is all part of the comedy. Austen’s heroes are often deeply flawed. Darcy insults Elizabeth at a ball, deplores her silly mother’s character, and later during a marriage proposal adds that he tried to resist his love because of her disgraceful family. How do they get together? You have to read the book.

The Concept of a River’s Personhood

Robert Macfarlane’s new book, Is a River Alive?, explains the concept of rivers as living beings. Part nature writing, part travel writing, part science, this beautiful book is a lyrical description of rivers and their need for protection. On his journeys to three countries he “meets” rivers and converses with scientists and activists. He paints a convincing portrait of the personhood of rivers. He even refers to rivers by the relative pronoun, who.

I had no idea there was a Rights of Nature movement. In many countries, rivers are now protected by law. Macfarlane says that a city council in Sussex in England “has acknowledged the rights and legal personhood of the River Ouse.”

I picked up Macfarlane’s book because of a near-total fish kill in two rivers in the Midwest.

A year and a half ago a fertilizer spill in southwest Iowa killed over 750,000 fish in the East Nishnabotna River in Iowa and the Missouri River in Missouri. It was a near-total fish kill in both states.

I understand that the rivers will come back – but this was a tragedy. As far as I know, no new measures have been legislated to protect the rivers.

Notes on Fanny Burney’s “Cecilia”: The Power of the Name

“Is Fanny Burney better than Jane Austen?” I asked as I tore through Burney’s 941-page novel, Cecilia (1,004 pages with notes). I was spellbound by Burney’s first novel, Evelina, and her second novel, Cecilia, is a masterpiece. The brilliant novelist Fanny Burney (1752-1840) also influenced Austen, Charlotte Bronte, and Dickens.

I finally decided that Burney is better than Austen, though not all will agree. Both women are elegant writers, with very different styles. Austen is a minimalist, Burney a maximalist. Geography is also an issue; most of Austen’s novels are set in small villages; most of Burney’s Cecilia is set in London. Austen and Burney both write exquisitely, but Burney is wordier. Her long sentences delightfully propel the plot as she luxuriously spins out her story at great length. Austen pleases us with brevity and wit.

In Cecilia, each long, periodic sentence is exquisitely, perfectly formed, the pages are lively and strewn with pithy dialogue, and scene after scene (some not absolutely necessary) showcase expansive, fascinating descriptions of rich people and and glitzy, decadent parties. Everything is about class and money in Cecilia’s world. Think of the parties in Trollope’s The Way We Live Now, Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies. Cecilia neither enjoys the parties nor wishes to know the partiers.

The critic Margaret Anne Doody makes a very odd comment about Cecilia: she writes that Cecilia is a “parodic male.” I understand her reasoning, though I adamantly disagree. Cecilia, to the people around her, is an heiress, defined by her fortune. Many men pursue her. She is not interested in wealth: she would prefer to do good works and give money to charity. Now that, to me, is a common trait of women in literature, not of a parodic male.

But it is the issue of her last name, Beverley, that intrigues Doody. Cecilia has not yet inherited her fortune: that will happen in a few months when she turns 21. In the will, her uncle stated that she would inherit the money on the condition that she keep her last name, and that, if she should marry, her husband must take her name. This issue seems trivial to Cecilia, but it is an unusual situation for a woman. And indeed, the politics of names dominate the book.

Beautiful Cecilia is that rare heroine: a woman not interested in marrying. At concerts and the opera, her superficial friends talk so much Cecilia can’t hear the music. She is much better-educated and more intellectual than most of them. But when she finally falls in love, it is the name change that stands in the way. Not to the younger generation: Cecilia and her boyfriend, Mortimer Delville, consider the the name buisness nonsensical. But Mr. and Mrs. Delville are furious. They say their aristocratic name must be preserved.

One would think that feminism would have conquered the “name change” issue, and that its significance would have radically changed over the years. Yet very few women keep their “maiden” name when they marry, i.e., their family name, which is, of course, their father’s name. According to the Pew Research Center in 2023, 79% of women in opposite-sex marriages say they took their spouse’s last name. Another 14% kept their last name, and 5% hyphenated both names. (Pew does not have stats for gay marriage.)

I find myself still explaining, “I kept my own name when I got married.” (N.B. I refuse to say, “maiden name.” ) To my astonishment, everyone knows my last name except for the phone company and distant relatves. I am listed under my husband’s name in the phone books -and his name is misspelled!

My mother did not change her name back to her “maiden name” after her divorce. She said she wanted the same name as her children. She clearly had thought it out.

Names resonate with us. We may want to keep our name as a part of our life-long identity, or to change it because it is a tradition of married life, or for the simple reason that we prefer our husand’s name.

But few had more difficulties than Cecilia Beverley. The name debate rages in this beautifully-written, thoughtful page-turner.