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.