Charlotte Lennox was an English author and poet. She is most famous now as the author of The Female Quixote

The Female Quixote

The Female Quixote; or, The Adventures of Arabella was a novel written by Charlotte Lennox imitating and parodying the ideas of Miguel de Cervantes' Don Quixote. Published in 1752, two years after she wrote her first novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart, it was her best known and most celebrated work...

and for her association with Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson , often referred to as Dr. Johnson, was an English author who made lasting contributions to English literature as a poet, essayist, moralist, literary critic, biographer, editor and lexicographer...

, Joshua Reynolds

Joshua Reynolds

Sir Joshua Reynolds RA FRS FRSA was an influential 18th-century English painter, specialising in portraits and promoting the "Grand Style" in painting which depended on idealization of the imperfect. He was one of the founders and first President of the Royal Academy...

, and Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson

Samuel Richardson was an 18th-century English writer and printer. He is best known for his three epistolary novels: Pamela: Or, Virtue Rewarded , Clarissa: Or the History of a Young Lady and The History of Sir Charles Grandison...

, but she had a long career and wrote poetry, prose, and drama.

Life

Charlotte Lennox was born in Gibraltar

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a British overseas territory located on the southern end of the Iberian Peninsula at the entrance of the Mediterranean. A peninsula with an area of , it has a northern border with Andalusia, Spain. The Rock of Gibraltar is the major landmark of the region...

. Her father, James Ramsay, was a Scottish captain

Captain (naval)

Captain is the name most often given in English-speaking navies to the rank corresponding to command of the largest ships. The NATO rank code is OF-5, equivalent to an army full colonel....

 in the Royal Navy

Royal Navy

The Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...

, and her mother was Scottish and Irish

Irish people

The Irish people are an ethnic group who originate in Ireland, an island in northwestern Europe. Ireland has been populated for around 9,000 years , with the Irish people's earliest ancestors recorded having legends of being descended from groups such as the Nemedians, Fomorians, Fir Bolg, Tuatha...

. She was baptised Barbara Ramsay. Very little direct evidence for her pre-public life is available, and biographers have extrapolated from her first novel elements that seem semi-autobiographical. Charlotte and her family moved to New York in 1738; her father died in 1742, but she and her mother remained in New York for a few years. At the age of fifteen she accepted a position as a companion to the widow Mary Luckyn in London, but upon her arrival she discovered that her future employer had apparently become "deranged" following the death of her son. As the position was no longer available, Charlotte then became a companion to Lady Isabella Finch.

Her first volume of poetry was entitled Poems on Several Occasions, dedicated to Lady Isabella in 1747. She was preparing herself for a position at court, but such a future was rendered moot by her marriage to Alexander Lennox, "an indigenous and shiftless Scot". His only known employment was in the customs office from 1773–1782, and this was reported to be as a benefice of the Duke of Newcastle as a reward for his wife. He also claimed to be the proper heir to the Earl of Lennox in 1768, but the House of Lords

House of Lords

The House of Lords is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster....

 rejected his claims on the basis of bastardry, or his "Birth misfortunes" as Charlotte tactfully described them.

After her marriage Charlotte turned her attention to becoming an actress, but without much success. Horace Walpole described her performance at Richmond in 1748 as "deplorable". She did though receive a benefit night at the Haymarket Theatre

Haymarket Theatre

The Theatre Royal Haymarket is a West End theatre in the Haymarket in the City of Westminster which dates back to 1720, making it the third-oldest London playhouse still in use...

 in a production of The Mourning Bride in 1750. That year she also published her most successful poem, The Art of Coquetry in Gentleman's Magazine. She met Samuel Johnson around this time, and he held her in very high regard. When her first novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart, Written by Herself, appeared, Johnson threw a lavish party for Lennox, with a laurel wreath and an apple pie that contained bay leaf

Bay leaf

Bay leaf refers to the aromatic leaf of the bay laurel . Fresh or dried bay leaves are used in cooking for their distinctive flavor and fragrance. The leaves are often used to flavor soups, stews, braises and pâtés in Mediterranean cuisine...

. Johnson thought her superior to his other female literary friends, Elizabeth Carter

Elizabeth Carter

Elizabeth Carter was an English poet, classicist, writer and translator, and a member of the Bluestocking Circle.-Biography:...

, Hannah More

Hannah More

Hannah More was an English religious writer, and philanthropist. She can be said to have made three reputations in the course of her long life: as a poet and playwright in the circle of Johnson, Reynolds and Garrick, as a writer on moral and religious subjects, and as a practical...

, and Frances Burney. He ensured that Charlotte Lennox was introduced to important members of the London literary scene.

The women of Johnson's circle were not fond of Lennox. Hester Thrale

Hester Thrale

Hester Lynch Thrale was a British diarist, author, and patron of the arts. Her diaries and correspondence are an important source of information about Samuel Johnson and 18th-century life.-Biography:Thrale was born at Bodvel Hall, Caernarvonshire, Wales...

, Elizabeth Carter, and Lady Mary Wortley Montagu all faulted her, either for her housekeeping, her unpleasant personality, or her temper. They regarded her specifically as unlady-like and incendiary.

However, Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson both reviewed and helped out with Lennox's second and most successful novel, The Female Quixote, or, The Adventures of Arabella, and Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding

Henry Fielding was an English novelist and dramatist known for his rich earthy humour and satirical prowess, and as the author of the novel Tom Jones....

 praised the novel in his Covent Garden Journal. The Female Quixote was quite popular. It was reprinted and packaged in a series of great novels in 1783, 1799, and 1810. It was translated into German in 1754, French in 1773 and 1801, and Spanish in 1808. The novel formally inverts Don Quixote: as the don mistakes himself for the knightly hero of a Romance, so Arabella mistakes herself for the maiden love of a Romance. While the don thinks it his duty to praise the Platonically pure damsels he meets (such as the farm girl he loves), so Arabella believes it is in her power to kill with a look and it is the duty of her lovers to suffer ordeals on her behalf.

The Female Quixote was officially anonymous and technically unrecognized until after Lennox's death. The anonymity was an open secret, though, as her other works were advertised as, by "the author of The Female Quixote", but no published version of The Female Quixote bore her name during her life. The translator-censor of the Spanish version, Lieutenant Colonel Don Bernardo María de Calzada, appropriated the text, saying "written in English by unknown author and in Spanish by D. Bernardo", even though de Calzada, who was not fluent in English, only translated to Spanish the previous French translation, which was already censored. In the preface, de Calzada also warns the reader of the questionable quality of the text, as good British texts were only written by "Fyelding" and Richardson, the two authors with international fame (in contrast to the often mechanical "romances" produced by various names for shops like Edmund Curll

Edmund Curll

Edmund Curll was an English bookseller and publisher. His name has become synonymous, through the attacks on him by Alexander Pope, with unscrupulous publication and publicity. Curll rose from poverty to wealth through his publishing, and he did this by approaching book printing in a mercenary...

's or the satirical romances appearing under one-off pseudonyms that were not, first and foremost, novels).

Joseph Baretti

Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti

Giuseppe Marc'Antonio Baretti was an Italian-born English literary critic and author of two influential language-translation dictionaries...

 taught Lennox Italian and several helped her translate The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy, the most influential French study of Greek tragedy at mid-18th century. Learning several languages, Charlotte Lennox took an interest in the sources for Shakespeare's

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

 plays. In 1753, she wrote Shakespear Illustrated, which discussed Shakespeare's sources extensively. She preferred originals to their adaptations, and so her work ended up being critical of Shakespeare. She did not discuss any of the beauties of Shakespeare's poetry or the power of his personifications, and so Garrick and Johnson both regarded her work as being more of a case of Shakespeare exposed than Shakespeare illustrated. In 1755 she translated Memoirs of Maximilian de Bethune, Duke of Sully, which sold well.

Her third novel, Henrietta, appeared in 1758 and sold well, but it did not bring her any money. From 1760 to 1761 she wrote for the periodical The Lady's Museum, which contained material which would eventually comprise her 1762 novel Sophia. David Garrick

David Garrick

David Garrick was an English actor, playwright, theatre manager and producer who influenced nearly all aspects of theatrical practice throughout the 18th century and was a pupil and friend of Dr Samuel Johnson...

 produced her Old City Manners at Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

Theatre Royal, Drury Lane

The Theatre Royal, Drury Lane is a West End theatre in Covent Garden, in the City of Westminster, a borough of London. The building faces Catherine Street and backs onto Drury Lane. The building standing today is the most recent in a line of four theatres at the same location dating back to 1663,...

 in 1775 (an adaptation of Ben Jonson

Ben Jonson

Benjamin Jonson was an English Renaissance dramatist, poet and actor. A contemporary of William Shakespeare, he is best known for his satirical plays, particularly Volpone, The Alchemist, and Bartholomew Fair, which are considered his best, and his lyric poems...

's Eastward Ho). Finally, in 1790, she published Euphemia, her last novel, with little success, as the public's interest in novels of romance seemed to have waned.

She had two children who survived infancy, Harriot Holles Lennox (1765–1802/4) and George Lewis Lennox (b. 1771). She was estranged from her husband for many years, and the couple finally separated for good in 1793. Charlotte subsequently lived in "solitary penury" for the rest of her life, entirely reliant on the support of the Literary Fund. She died on January 4, 1804 and was buried in an unmarked grave at Broad Court cemetery.

During the 19th century, The Female Quixote remained moderately popular. In the 20th century, feminist

Feminism

Feminism is a collection of movements aimed at defining, establishing, and defending equal political, economic, and social rights and equal opportunities for women. Its concepts overlap with those of women's rights...

 scholars such as Janet Todd

Janet Todd

Janet Margaret Todd is a Welsh-born academic and a well-respected author of many books on women in literature. Todd was educated at Cambridge University and the University of Florida, where she undertook a doctorate on the poet John Clare...

, Jane Spencer

Jane Spencer

Jane Spencer is an American Filmmaker who co-wrote and directed the film Little Noises, with lead actors Crispin Glover, Tatum O'Neal and Rik Mayall which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was screened at the Goteborg Film Festival , Wine Valley Festival and was distributed in the USA and...

, and Nancy Armstrong

Nancy Armstrong

Nancy Armstrong is a scholar, critic and is a professor of English at Duke University.-Overview:Before moving to Duke, Armstrong was the Nancy Duke Lewis Professor of Comparative Literature, English, Modern Culture & Media, and Gender Studies at Brown University...

 have praised Lennox's skill and inventiveness.

Poetry

• Poems on Several Occasions (1747
  1747 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Works published:* Sir William Blackstone, The Panthion, published anonymously, attribution uncertain* William Dunkin, Boeotia...
  
  )
• The Art of Coquetry (1750
  1750 in poetry
  Nationality words link to articles with information on the nation's poetry or literature .-Events:* Christopher Smart wins the Seatonian Prize for "On the Attributes of the Supreme Being"-Works published:...
  
  )

Novels

• The Life of Harriot Stuart (1751)
• The Female Quixote (1752)
• Henrietta (1758)
• Sophia (1762)
• Euphemia (1790)
• Hermione (1791)

External links

• The Charlotte Lennox page at the University of Missouri
• Ruth Facer, 'Charlotte (Ramsay) Lennox (c. 1729–1804)' at www.chawton.org
• The Female Quixote free ebook in PDF, PDB and LIT formats
• The Female Quixote, Volume 1 at LibriVox
  LibriVox
  LibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...
  
  free audiobook