Fanny flees her country home in pursuit of London and literature after her foster father has seduced her. Her adventures are designed to illuminate social concerns and reimagine specific aspects of eighteenth-century life.

Thrust by disaster (and male villainy) into one extreme situation after another, Fanny generally finds a way to turn the circumstances to her own good. She joins a band of witches, a gang of highway robbers, a stable of prostitutes, the crew of a slave ship, and a grandly idealistic pirate band.

Although the novel's narrative span is quite brief — events move with breathtaking speed — Fanny's first-person voice grows from innocence to maturity. She engages less in adolescent maundering and second-hand philosophizing as worldly experience gives her grounds for her own opinions and pregnancy forces her to become both independent and responsible. Other women are also important to Fanny's development. The mulatto servant...