Beautiful and independent, Arabella has been brought up in rural seclusion by her widowed father. Devoted to reading French romances, the sheltered young woman imagines all sorts of misadventures that can befall a heroine such as herself. As she makes forays into fashionable society in Bath and London, many scrapes and mortifications ensue - all men seem like predators for a distressed gentlewoman, and she risks her life by throwing herself into the Thames to avoid a potential seducer. Can Arabella be cured of her romantic delusions?<BR>In her introduction, Amanda Gilroy discusses Charlotte's Lennox's life and literary career, the eighteenth-century vogue for romances, the character of Arabella and the novel's treatment of women's fashion and roles. This edition also includes a chronology, a bibliography and notes.