Name: Evelina, or, The history of a young lady's entrance into the world
ISBN: 0393971589

Fanny Burney

authoritative text, contexts and contemporary reactions, criticism

Evelina, or, The history of a young lady's entrance into the world

Evelina and Lord Orville are so cute omg 💌

Sophia McKeehan 

‘I do think, that whoever has once seen Miss Anville, must receive an impression never to be forgotten.’

Frances Burney

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 eighteenth-century London. 

As she describes her heroine's entry into society, womanhood and, inevitably, love, Burney exposes the vulnerability of female innocence 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 visits, and balls. But Evelina's innocence also makes her a shrewd commentator on the excesses and absurdities of manners and social ambitions—as well as attracting the attention of the eminently eligible Lord Orville. 

Evelina, comic and shrewd, is at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late eighteenth century, and a love story. The new introduction and full notes to this edition help make this richness all the more readily available to a modern reader.

Hannah Alexander 

Evelina

Novel Ideas

Molly M

A story of initiation into the ways of the world for a young, provincial girl, Evelina is both richly comic and gravely moral. It is at once a guide to fashionable London, a satirical attack on the new consumerism, an investigation of women's position in the late eighteeenth century, and a love story. The new introduction and full notes to this edition make this richness all the more readily available to a modern reader.

Evelina, or, The history of a young lady's entrance into the world authoritative text, contexts and contemporary reactions, criticism