Frances Burney's first and most enduringly popular novel is a vivid, satirical,
and seductive account of the pleasures and dangers of fashionable life in late e
ighteenth-century London. As she describes her heroine's entry into society, wom
anhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocen
ce in an image-conscious and often cruel world where social snobbery and sexual
aggression are played out in the public arenas of pleasure-gardens, theatre visi
ts, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a shrewd commentator on th
e excesses and absurdities of manners and social ambitions--as well as attractin
g the attention of the eminently eligible Lord Orville.
