The Female Quixote completely inverts the adventures of Don Quixote. While the latter mistook himself for the hero of a Romance, Arabella believes she is the fair maiden. She believes she can fell a hero with one look and that any number of lovers would be happy to suffer on her behalf.

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1752 edition. Excerpt: ... T HE Female Quixote BOOK I. Chap. I. Contains a Turn at Court, neither new nor surprising.-- DEGREESSome useless Additions to a sine Lady's Education.*--The bad EffeSls of a whimsical Study, which some will say is borrowed from Cer HE Marquis of for a long Series of Years, was the sirst and most distinguished Favourite at Court: He held the most honourable Employments under the Crown, disposed of all Places of Profit as he pleased, presided at the Council, and in a manner governed the whole Kingdom. Vol. I. B ThU This extensive Authority could not sail of making him many Enemies: He fell at last a Sacrifice to the Plots they were continually forming against Jiim; and was not only removed from all his Employments, but banished the Court for ever. The Pain his undeserved Disgrace gave him, he was enabled to conceal by the natural Haughtinese of his Temper; and, behaving rather like a Man who'fears resigned, than been dismissed from his Posts, he imagined he triumphed sufficiently over the Malice of his Enemies, while he seemed to be wholly insensible of the Effects it produced. His secret Discontent, however, was so much augmented by the Opportunity he now had of observing the Baseness and Ingratitude of Mankind, which in some Degree he experienced every Day, that he resolved to quit all Society whatever, and. devote the rest of his Life to Solitude and Privacy. For the Place of his Retreat he pitched upon a Castle he had in a very remote Province of she Kingdom, iri the Neighbourhood of a small ViUage, and several Miles distant from any Town. The vast Extent of Ground which surrounded this noble Building, he had caused to be laid out in a Manner peculiar to his Taste: The most laborious Endeavours of Art had been used to make it appear like

The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella was a novel written by Charlotte Lennox imitating and parodying the ideas of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Published in 1752, two years after she wrote her first novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart, it was her best known and most celebrated work. It was approved by both Henry Fielding and Samuel Richardson, applauded by Samuel Johnson, and used as a model by Jane Austen for her famous work, Northanger Abbey. It has been called a burlesque, "satirical harlequinade", and a depiction of the real power of females. While some dismissed Arabella as a coquette who simply used romance as a tool, Scott Paul Gordon said that she "exercises immense power without any consciousness of doing so". Norma Clarke has ranked it with Clarissa, Tom Jones, and Roderick Random as one of the "defining texts in the development of the novel in the eighteenth century".

No detailed description available for "Women and Romance".

Little is definitively known about Charlotte Lennox (1730?-1804) before the publication of her novels and poetry other than she was probably born in Gibraltar to the English captain-lieutenant, James Ramsay, and moved to New York when she was ten. It is thought that she spent much of her childhood reading romance novels as a solution to the boredom of living at small frontier outposts. She was particularly drawn to Miguel de Cervantes' "Don Quixote," and in 1752 she published "The Female Quixote, Or, The Adventures of Arabella" to enthusiastic reception. The work is part imitation and part commentary on the original, casting a privileged young daughter of a marquis, Arabella, as the novel's heroine. Just like Don Quixote, Arabella embarks on a series of adventures in the countryside, all the while mistakenly thinking herself to be the archetypal maiden of a Romance. This novel served as the basis for Jane Austen's "Northanger Abbey."