The Female Quixote Volume I Is Now Available

Today sees the publication of Volume I of Charlotte Lennox's The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella, the latest title in the P-Wave Classics series.

First published in 1752, The Female Quixote occupies a unique place in the history of the English novel. Admired by Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding, it is often remembered as a comic tale of a young woman whose understanding of life has been shaped by the heroic romances of seventeenth-century France. Yet its reputation as a parody only hints at the richness and complexity of what Lennox achieved.

At the heart of the novel is Arabella, one of the most distinctive heroines in eighteenth-century fiction. Intelligent, eloquent and utterly committed to the principles she has absorbed from her beloved romances, she moves through the world according to a logic that appears absurd to those around her. Yet the longer one spends in her company, the harder it becomes to dismiss her merely as an object of satire.

Part of the enduring fascination of The Female Quixote lies in the questions it raises. How far do the books we read shape our understanding of reality? What happens when imagination comes into conflict with social convention? Can a society that prides itself on common sense always be trusted to recognise what it loses when it abandons ideals? These questions feel no less relevant today than they did in Lennox's own century.

This new P-Wave Classics edition restores The Female Quixote to its original two-volume format and presents a carefully established text based principally on the first edition of 1752. Volume I includes a new introduction, a biographical essay on Charlotte Lennox, an extended essay on The World of French Romance, and a Glossary of the Romance World designed to help modern readers navigate the literary tradition that shaped Arabella's imagination.

To accompany publication, we have also published a series of essays exploring some of the novel's major themes:

• The Female Quixote Is Not a Female Don Quixote – Why Lennox's novel is far more than a simple adaptation of Cervantes' famous premise.
• Arabella Lives Inside Fiction – How stories shape identity, perception and our understanding of reality.
• Arabella Refuses to Dress Properly – Clothing, spectacle, femininity and social discipline in eighteenth-century society.
• The Price of Becoming Sensible – Why Arabella's famous cure remains one of the most intriguing and ambiguous conclusions in eighteenth-century fiction.

More than two and a half centuries after its publication, The Female Quixote remains witty, surprising and intellectually provocative. It is a novel about books, imagination and the stories through which people understand themselves and the world around them. Above all, it is a reminder that becoming sensible may sometimes be more complicated than it first appears.

Volume I is available now in paperback and ebook editions from P-Wave Press and booksellers worldwide.

📚 Explore the book and order here↗︎