Customer Reviews

Sophia

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SOPHIA is a novel solidly in the sentimental tradition. It first appeared in 1760, not only written by Charlotte Lennox but also serialized in her own monthly magazine - a daring idea that would usher in a whole new publishing methodology.

The story follows the fortunes of a widow and her two daughters after the death of their father, a fine gentleman who squandered his inheritance and left his family destitute.

The widow is beautiful, extravagant and frivolous, and her daughter Harriot is just like her. The younger daughter Sophia is not stunning like her sister, but her intelligence, high principles and subtle elegance are ultimately more attractive. Sir Charles Stanley, the rich but morally lax young gentleman essential to the plot, attempts to seduce Harriot, then changes the object of his desire when he beholds the superior Sophia.

Various misadventures and misunderstandings ensue to challenge virtue and torment lovers.

Charlotte Lennox saw her first novel published when she was twenty. A protégée of Samuel Johnson, she achieved fame in an age when male writers were the dominant powers on the literary scene.

Contemporary reviewers praised SOPHIA as "an agreeable love-tale," just the sort of morally improving book young ladies ought to read. But even as a twenty-first-century woman reader, with none of the social restrictions suffered by Sophia, I found myself charmed by the graceful prose style, the engaging story and the characters, all so quaintly reflective of their time and place.

The introduction is a bit dry, but I was fascinated by the notes that followed on female property and education, rank and titles, social status of the clergy, currency values and everyday transportation in mid-eighteenth-century England.