Evelina

'O Sir, how much uneasiness must I suffer, to counterbalance one short morning of happiness!'

Raised in rural seclusion, the beautiful Evelina's entrance to the world of fashionable London sees her collide with the manners and customs of a society she doesn't understand. Victim of the rakish advances of Sir Clement Willoughby and the appearance of her vulgar, capricious grandmother, she finds herself without hope that she should ever deserve the attention of the man she loves.

Frances Burney's first novel is both broadly comic and sharply incisive. It brilliantly satirises the affectations and excesses of eighteenth-century society - and its opinion of women - while enticingly depicting its delights.