Or the history of a young lady's entrance into the world. 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 eighteenth 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.