The Female Quixote: or The Adventures of Arabella (Oxford World's Classics) [Paperback]

Charlotte Lennox (Author), Margaret Dalziel (Editor), Margaret Anne Doody (Introduction), Duncan Isles (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 22, 1998 | Series: Oxford World's Classics

The Female Quixote, a vivacious and ironical novel parodying the style of Cervantes, portrays Arabella, the beautiful daughter of a marquis, whose passion for reading romances colors her approach to her own life and causes many comical and melodramatic misunderstandings among her relatives and admirers. Both Joseph Fielding and Samuel Johnson greatly admired Lennox, and this novel established her as one of the most successful practitioners of the "Novel of Sentiment."

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Margaret Dalziel is at University of Otago. Margaret Anne Doody is at Vanderbilt University.

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (October 22, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192835726
• ISBN-13: 978-0192835727
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,098,576 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars An Eighteenth-Century Women's Novel, June 26, 2001

By 

"tanchi" (Rio Piedras, PR USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Female Quixote: or The Adventures of Arabella (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

Charlotte Lennox's heroine, raised in complete seclusion from the world by her misanthropic father, grows up believing that romances (of the chivalric kind already satirized by Cervantes more than a century before in the original Don Quixote)are true histories and that the extravagant behavior of the knights and heroes in such texts is the model for modern (18th century)men. Poor Arabella is doomed to be ridiculous! Her world of romance never was and never will be. But although she makes the most absurd mistakes, she is intelligent and strangely wise much of the time: she ignores fashion, she believes in complete honesty and fidelity, she rejects all accomodations to practical, but base, worldly wisdom. She constructs a world of her own in which women, who in the real world were quite helpless and treated as chattel, hold real power.

It is perhaps unfortunate that Lennox was a bit too much under the influence of Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson, both great writers but quite conservative in their views about women and their place in society (firmly under the power of men). The ending of the novel seems rushed and sad. Poor Arabella, so delightfully original throughout most of the novel, is "reformed"--as one of my friends said after reading it, and so "she becomes completely ordinary." If it weren't for the ending, the book would get five stars.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars DO NOT BUY THE GENERAL BOOKS COPY, January 25, 2010

By 

L. Remi (USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

I bought the copy of this book that was being sold by Amazon and was published by General Books. DON NOT BUY IT!! It was absolutly terrible. I was charged $9.42, when in reality they should have been paying me to read that trash. In the General Books copy there were errors on almost every page. It made it a struggle to read. For example: page 86 "liNI) of the second book" or on page 69 "Ac-corJirgly". Those are just two of the hundreds of errors. If you don't mind the errors then buy that copy; however, if you intend on keeping this book or using it for any type of school assignment, do not buy from General Books.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars very funny, January 27, 2011

By 

setsuna modo - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Female Quixote: or The Adventures of Arabella (Oxford World's Classics) (Paperback)

I laughed so hard at one point I was almost crying.If you enjoy comedy derived from misunderstandings, and enjoy books from this time period, this one wont let you down.