The Female Quixote

by Charlotte Lennox

Overview

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 wishing to ravish her, she mistakes a cross-dressing prostitute 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? An immediate success when it first appeared in 1752, The Female Quixote is a wonderfully high-spirited parody of the style of Cervantes, and a telling and comic depiction of eighteenth-century English society.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780141958613
Publisher:	Penguin UK
Publication date:	09/28/2006
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	528
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Charlotte Lennox (1720 - 1804), American-born English novelist whose work was much admired by leading literary figures of her time, including Samuel Johnson and the novelists Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson. Lennox's first novel was The Life of Harriot Stuart (1751). The Female Quixote (1752) and Henrietta (1758) followed.

Amanda Gilroy and Wil Verhoeven both teach at the University of Groningen, having previously taught at Brown University in the US. Together they have edited Gilbert Imlay's The Emigrants for Penguin Classics and they have also published widely in the area of historical travel writing.

Editorial Reviews

DON QUIXOTE has been adapted or parodied many times over the centuries, and this 1752 version by Charlotte Lennox holds up pretty well as read by Juliet Stevenson. (It was also one of the inspirations for Jane Austen's NORTHANGER ABBEY.) Lady Arabella has read too many romances, and, having grown up in isolation in the country, she interprets them as history. Stevenson takes us through the novel’s episodes with a series of characters who must cope with Arabella's delusions. All the characters come vividly to life, particularly the increasingly exasperated Charles Glanville, Arabella's would-be fiancé, who tries to spare her from the consequences of her nutty actions. Stevenson's reading heightens the humor and the pathos, and may help popularize this novel among today’s listeners. D.M.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile

DON QUIXOTE has been adapted or parodied many times over the centuries, and this 1752 version by Charlotte Lennox holds up pretty well as read by Juliet Stevenson. (It was also one of the inspirations for Jane Austen's NORTHANGER ABBEY.) Lady Arabella has read too many romances, and, having grown up in isolation in the country, she interprets them as history. Stevenson takes us through the novel’s episodes with a series of characters who must cope with Arabella's delusions. All the characters come vividly to life, particularly the increasingly exasperated Charles Glanville, Arabella's would-be fiancé, who tries to spare her from the consequences of her nutty actions. Stevenson's reading heightens the humor and the pathos, and may help popularize this novel among today’s listeners. D.M.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2020, Portland, Maine

APRIL 2020 - AudioFile