Arabella, whose taste was as delicate, sentiments as refined, and judgment as clear as any person’s could be who believed the authen­ticity of Scudery’s romances . . .

Arabella, the “female Quixote”, does not go around tilting at windmills and having heroic adventures on the road. Instead, like her eponym, she thinks novels are reality—even though, as the editor assures us, she is “rational in every respect where her particular whim is not touched”. Think of her as the precursor to Catherine Morland.

The Female Quixote was published when the author was in her early 20s. It was a great success, and remains her best-known work. But it didn’t last; Charlotte Lennox (1729 or 1730–1804) died in poverty.

The present ebook is based on the British Novelists edition from 1810. The editor, Anna Laetitia Barbauld (1743–1825), includes a brief biography of the author, along with some editorial comments it’s hard to disagree with. She is probably mistaken about the author’s birthplace, though; more recent sources tend to say it was Gibraltar.

Arabella’s Peculiar Whim—and the Author’s

The footnotes in Books One and Nine were supplied by the author herself. Already in the mid-18th century, English readers would have needed some clues about the rules governing the 17th-century French pseudo-historical romances that form Arabella’s literary diet. That goes double for readers in the early 19th—or, for that matter, the early 21st—century.

Unless you are writing a dissertation on Charlotte Lennox, there is no earthly reason to read the French novels themselves. Among other things, their authors liked to spread themselves out; ten volumes is not uncommon. If you are really wild with curiosity, there’s currently a web site giving as much detail as any normal person would need. Otherwise just wait for Book Six, which is largely taken up with Sir George Bellmour’s recounting of his (wholly fabricated) “history”. Arabella eats it up. A shorter version of the same thing—again staged for Arabella’s benefit—comes in Chapter IV of Book Nine.

Fortunately, Arabella’s story is lots of fun even if you don’t know the literary background. Here she is instructing her maid in how to narrate her mistress’s history. Arabella is not just annoyed but offended at the girl’s reluctance:

you ask me to tell you what you must say, as if it was not necessary you should know as well as myself, and be able not only to recount all my words and actions, even the smallest and most inconsider­able, but also all my thoughts, however instantaneous; relate exactly every change of my countenance, number all my smiles, half-smiles, blushes, turnings pale, glances, pauses, full-stops, interruptions; the rise and falling of my voice, every motion of my eyes, and every gesture which I have used for these ten years past: nor omit the smallest circumstance that relates to me.

I did say that Arabella thinks novels are reality, but you thought I was exaggerating.

Two baronets figure prominently in the story. Sir Charles is Arabella’s uncle, the father of Mr. Glanville—whose given name, we eventually learn, is also Charles. Sir George Bellmour is the young man who is in love with Arabella(’s fortune). If, like me, you keep getting them mixed up, it may help to postulate that the older man is named for a 17th-century king, while the younger man is named for a current king.

Caution: Along with accepting—or at least understanding—Arabella’s peculiar version of reality, you also have to accept the author’s alternative reality. In the world according to Charlotte Lennox, an eighteen-year-old heiress can live on a country estate all by herself, unsupervised and unchaperoned, entertaining any guests she happens to invite.

Illustrations

The illustrations, with captions, are taken from the 1799 Charles Cooke edition. (Trivia: This is by far the oldest book I have ever bought. I can just about count on my fingers the number of books I own that were even printed before I was born, let alone in a different century. It was stunningly inexpensive.)

The six exquisitely detailed engravings were made for Cooke, individually dated from April through September 1799. Four are based on drawings by Richard Corbould (1757–1831), and two more from paintings by Thomas Kirk (1765–1797). I’ve shown them in their original locations; the captions are as printed, long esses and all. But to really appreciate the work, you have to see the engravings at original size. They are tiny. The books themselves are smaller than today’s mass-market paperbacks. The picture area is about 7×12 cm: less than 3×5 in., or smaller than an index card.

In addition to the engravings, Volume I had three vignettes—end of Book One, end of Chapter IX of Book Two, and end of Book Three—and a decorative title page. For the ebook I’ve distributed them around this front page instead.

Fun fact: Richard Corbould’s great-grandson Walton (1859–1919) was the original illustrator of John Ivimey’s Three Blind Mice. It was an artistic family.

Language

The Female Quixote came out in 1752, ten years before Robert Lowth’s A Short Introduction to English Grammar. That means the ahistorical pseudo-rules you learned from a succession of mediocre teachers had, quite literally, not been invented yet. I especially like the many clauses that end with a preposition:

• she had some agreeable news to acquaint him with
• the offence I have been guilty of
• the unfortunate man you solicit for
• a man whom . . . she had given freedom to
• the most probable place to find him in

(For the record, this wasn’t even a “rule”. Bishop Lowth—rhymes with “south”—merely expressed it as a preference.)

Arabella absolutely loves the word “questionless”, especially in the early-to-middle part of the novel; almost nobody else uses it. The word was at its peak of popularity in the second half of the 17th century, when all those French novels’ bad translations would have been made. Meanwhile, everyone likes saying “in fine”, and they all say “dispense with” where today we would say “excuse” or “forgive”.

At the time the novel was written, it was common to say “you was” when addressing a single person. There’s not a thing I can do about it. You will also see the occasional “neither . . . or” where today we would insist on “neither . . . nor”.

More linguistic quirks and inconsistencies, in no particular order:

• The spellings “accessary”, “just” (modern “joust”) and “shew” are used consistently.
• The word “christian” is always lower-case.
• As usual in books of this vintage, -ize spellings are common: “apologize”, “signalize”, and my personal favorite, “surprize”.
• Forms like “any body” or “every thing” are always two words.
• The phrase “fair-one” is hyphenated more often than not.
• Halfway through the book, the author decided that “anti-chamber” should be hyphenated; with or without hyphen, it’s always “anti”.
• Variation between hyphenated and non-hyphenated forms of the same word—sometimes even on the same page—like “bedside” and “bed-side”, or “haymaker” and “hay-maker”, is in the original.

Formalities

This ebook is based on the 1810 British Novelists edition, volumes XXIV and XXV (of fifty). I’ve cross-checked some things against the 1820 version (Vols. XXIV and XXV)—which conveniently has all the same page breaks—and also the 1752 second edition (Vol. I, Vol. II).

Although I bought the 1799 edition for the illustrations, once it was on my shelf it was inevitable I’d check the text when I wanted a third—or fourth—opinion. Generally it turned out to have the same text, with the same errors and omis­sions, as 1810. Were they both set from the 1752 first edition (which I haven’t seen)? Or was the British Novelists edition set directly from Cooke?

Main exception: In the last three Books, which are filled with long conversa­tions, the 1752 second edition has many paragraph breaks that aren’t present in later editions. Since the author didn’t believe in quotation marks, the paragraph breaks make the conversations much easier to follow. I have added—or perhaps restored—them here. Many of these paragraph breaks replaced a — (dash) in run-on paragraphs. I have generally omitted this, except when the omission would have left no paragraph-ending punctuation at all.

Further exception: The British Novelists edition did not have a table of contents. The 1752 edition did—using the author’s delightful chapter summaries—so I have added one here too.

Apparent errors, such as missing words or dubious punctuation, were corrected if the 1752 and 1820 editions both had the expected form. Blatant errors, like “cofinrm” for “confirm”, were corrected regardless. (In case anyone wondered: The 1820 British Novelists edition corrects a fair number of minor errors from the 1810 edition, and would probably have made a better base text. But, as so often, I used the one with better scans, and hence cleaner OCR for a starting point.)

Typographical errors are marked with mouse-hover popups and are listed again at the end of each Book. The word “invisible” means that the letter or punctuation mark is missing, but there is an appropriately sized blank space.