First published in 1752, The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella is one of the most original and intellectually engaging novels of the eighteenth century. Celebrated by Samuel Johnson and admired by Henry Fielding, Lennox's work offers both a sparkling parody of heroic romance and a searching exploration of the power of reading to shape imagination, expectation and desire.
At its centre is Arabella, the daughter of a marquess, whose understanding of the world has been formed by the grand narratives of seventeenth-century French romance. Convinced that she is destined to inhabit a world of noble suitors, perilous adventures, and heroic devotion, she moves through contemporary society guided by the logic of an earlier age—often with comic, and sometimes unsettling, consequences.
This new P-Wave Classics edition restores The Female Quixote to its original two-volume form and presents a carefully established text based on the first edition of 1752. Volume I includes a new introduction, a biographical essay on Charlotte Lennox, and a substantial new essay, The World of French Romance, accompanied by a detailed Glossary of the Romance World. Together, these materials are designed to guide modern readers through the literary landscape that shaped Arabella's imagination—one that, even in Lennox's own time, was already beginning to appear curiously distant and old-fashioned.
Lennox's novel occupies a distinctive place in the development of the English novel. At once comic and serious, it engages with questions of literary influence, female autonomy and the tension between imagination and social reality. Arabella herself remains one of the most remarkable heroines of the period: intellectually formidable, morally serious and resistant to the limitations placed upon her.
The Female Quixote, Volume I, continues P-Wave Classics' commitment to presenting carefully edited editions of significant works from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, combining textual fidelity with accessible and illuminating editorial material.
Volume II will follow in September 2026.
Publication details
The Female Quixote, Volume I
Charlotte Lennox
Edited with notes and an introduction by L. A. Davenport
P-Wave Classics
Publication date: 23 June 2026
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Source: P-Wave Press
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