The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella

First published in 1752, Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella stands among the most original and intellectually engaging novels of the eighteenth century. Both a brilliant comic work and a serious reflection on the power of reading, it explores how imagination, shaped by books, can both liberate and unsettle the individual within society.

At its centre is Arabella, the daughter of a marquess, whose understanding of life and love has been formed by the heroic romances of seventeenth-century France. Convinced that the world operates according to their codes of honour, devotion and adventure, she interprets her surroundings through their logic, often with unexpected and revealing consequences.

Restored here to its original two-volume form, this P-Wave Classics edition presents a carefully established text based on the first edition of 1752, with modernised spelling for clarity. The edition includes a biographical introduction, a critical introduction to the novel, and original editorial material designed to situate Lennox’s work within its literary and cultural context.

A substantial accompanying essay, The World of French Romance, together with a detailed Glossary of the Romance World, offers readers a guide to the now distant but once deeply influential literary tradition that shaped Arabella’s imagination. These materials are intended to recreate, for the modern reader, something of the familiarity Lennox’s contemporaries would have had with a body of literature that was already beginning to appear curiously old-fashioned in her own time.

At once witty, perceptive, and quietly radical, The Female Quixote remains a landmark in the development of the English novel, and a profound exploration of the relationship between fiction and reality.