Customer Reviews

The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself

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The Life of Harriot Stuart by Charlotte Lennox was a book that I was very excited to begin reading. I have read a lot of articles about Charlotte Lennox and have heard her works praised by other famous literary giants including Samuel Johnson and Henry Fielding. This was the first book that was published by her and she is most recognized for her work The Female Quixote, or, The Adventures of Arabella. I have to admit that I had very high expectations for this book and there were things about the story that I really admired and certain aspects that I disliked. For the most part the story follows the adventures or misadventures of Harriot Stuart and is told from her perspective as if she writing a long letter to her friend Amanda. I think my biggest problem with this story was that I found myself disliking Harriot throughout the book and at times it was a struggle for me to keep reading. On the other hand, at times I found that I could not put it down. These inconsistences made it hard to keep reading. I do have to say that it is a good story and at times can be both humorous and tragic but I found that I liked Fanny Burney's way of writing better. Fanny Burney does an excellent job of playing with the emotions of her audience through her characters while I felt that Charlotte Lennox did not want us to even like her characters. I think the strongest aspect of this story is the way the book reads like a poem, the langugae is beautiful and flowery. Despite the things I did not like, the story is truly worth reading and I would continue to read other works by her to compare it to this one.