The Female Quixote. Or The Adventures of Arabella

In The Female Quixote (1752), Lennox exploits the clash of literary illusion and mundane reality with deft and high-spirited satire, whose comedy overlays a serious concern for her heroine. Brought up by her widowed father in a remote English castle, Arabella resorts to reading the French novels popular in her mother's youth, and in the solitude of this Arcadia paints a picture of her life as adventurous and deeply romantic.
When her father dies, however, she inherits a barbed legacy : if she is not to lose part of the estate, it appears she must marry her cousin Glanville. But Arabella has developed a different, private code of conduct which does not allow her to take any role but centre stage in the drama of her own life ; her literary heroines are always in control.