Evelina, or, The history of a young lady's entrance into the world
By: Frances Burney ; edited by Edward A. Bloom ; with an introduction and notes by Vivien Jones.
Contributors: Bloom, Edward Alan, 1914-
Series: Oxford world's classics; Oxford world's classics (Oxford University Press)
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2002
Place of publication: Oxford; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 455
Subjects: Young women -- Fiction.; Socialites -- Fiction.; Debutantes -- Fiction.; London (England) -- Fiction.
Genres: Fiction.
Other titles: Evelina; History of a young lady's entrance into the world
Description: "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."--Jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [xxxvii]-xxxix).