Gary Dexter investigates Pride And Prejudice by Jane Austen
Critics have often noted that Cecilia, the novel of 1782 by
Fanny Burney, matches Pride and Prejudice quite strikingly in plot and
theme.
Not surprising. Jane Austen was a great admirer of Fanny
Burney: in Northanger Abbey she refers to Cecilia as a 'work in which
the greatest powers of the mind are displayed', and in Persuasion she
has Anne Elliot mention a character from Cecilia ('the inimitable Miss
Larolles').
And it seems that it was from Cecilia that Austen got the title for her best-loved novel.
Cecilia ends with a paragraph in which the capitalised phrase 'PRIDE and PREJUDICE' recurs three times:
'The whole of this unfortunate business, said Dr Lyster, has
been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. […] if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE
you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to
PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination.'
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