Female Quixote, Or, The Adventures of Arabella

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' &quote;Don Quixote&quote;, and in 1752 she published &quote;The Female Quixote, Or, The Adventures of Arabella&quote; 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 &quote;Northanger Abbey&quote;.