The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella

First published in 1752, Charlotte Lennox’s The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella is one of the great comic novels of the eighteenth century. In Volume I of this restored two-volume edition, Arabella, the daughter of a marquess, forms her understanding of life and love from the heroic romances of seventeenth-century France. Convinced that noble suitors, desperate rivalries, and perilous adventures await her, she moves through the modern world guided by the logic of an earlier age, leaving confusion and fascination in her wake.

Celebrated by Samuel Johnson and admired by Henry Fielding, Lennox’s novel is far more than a lively parody. It is a subtle and perceptive exploration of how reading shapes imagination, expectation, and desire, and of the freedoms and constraints placed upon women in eighteenth-century society. Arabella emerges as one of the most original heroines in English fiction: intellectually formidable, morally serious, and magnificently out of step with her time.

This P-Wave Classics edition restores the novel in its original form, presenting a carefully established text based on the 1752 edition, with modernised spelling for clarity. Volume I includes a new introduction, an essay on The World of French Romance, and a detailed Glossary of the Romance World, offering readers a rich guide to the literary universe that shaped Arabella’s mind.

Edited with notes and an introduction by L.A. Davenport.

Our classics are produced as comfortable reading editions, with compact A-format paperbacks, readable type, standard paperback paper and, where appropriate, the original volume structure restored. They are designed to make classic literature feel fresh, accessible and a pleasure to read.

Find out how P-Wave Classics are published as books to be read today, not monuments to be endured.

Explore some of the themes and ideas behind Charlotte Lennox's remarkable novel:

• The Female Quixote Is Not a Female Don Quixote: Why Lennox's novel is far more than a simple imitation of Cervantes, and how Arabella's romance-shaped imagination exposes the limitations of the world around her.
• Arabella Lives Inside Fiction: How reading becomes identity, perception, and moral structure, and why The Female Quixote feels surprisingly modern in its understanding of the power of stories.
• Arabella Refuses to Dress Properly: Clothing, spectacle, femininity, and social discipline in Lennox's novel, and how Arabella's appearance challenges the conventions of eighteenth-century society.
• The Price of Becoming Sensible: Why Arabella's famous cure is more ambiguous than it first appears, and what may be lost when imagination yields to reason.

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
"Definitely a classic!…I love how this book discusses the dangers of idealistic love and show[s] what real love is. [It] is reminiscent of Jane Austen’s Northanger Abbey!" Lauralee J, NetGalley.

Charlotte Lennox (c.1729–1804) was an English novelist, critic, and translator whose work was admired by leading literary figures including Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. Born in Gibraltar and raised in England, she supported herself through a wide-ranging literary career that included poetry, fiction, translation, and criticism. Her best-known novel, The Female Quixote (1752), is a witty and perceptive exploration of reading, imagination, and women’s education. Long neglected, Lennox is now recognised as a central figure in the development of the English novel.

L. A. Davenport, born in Cork, Ireland, in 1973, is a novelist and short story writer whose works include The Nucleus of Reality, Escape, and No Way Home. A graduate of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, he brings extensive experience in medical journalism to his insightful and engaging fiction and non-fiction.

Learn more about L. A. Davenport and his writing at Pushing the Wave.