| Description |
xliv, 455 pages : illustrations ; 20 cm. |
| Series |
Oxford world's classics |
|
Oxford world's classics.
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references. |
| Summary |
'Lord Orville did me the honour to hand me to the coach, talking all the way of the honour I had done him! O these fashionable people!' 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. |
| Subject |
England -- Social life and customs -- 18th century -- Fiction.
|
|
England -- Social conditions -- 18th century -- Fiction.
|
| Added Author |
Bloom, Edward A. (Edward Alan), 1914-1994, editor.
|
|
Jones, Vivien, 1952- writer of supplementary textual content.
|
| ISBN |
9780199536931 (paperback) |
|
0199536937 (paperback) |
|
