Charlotte Lennox

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Standard Name: Lennox, Charlotte
Birth Name: Charlotte Ramsay
Married Name: Charlotte Lennox
Pseudonym: Sappho
Pseudonym: A Young Lady
Pseudonym: The Author of the Female Quixote
CL wrote during the eighteenth century, in every genre: poetry, fiction, translation, drama, a periodical, and scholarship. Yet she found it hard to make a living. Current interest in The Female Quixote still tends unjustly to obscure the rest of her oeuvre.
Title-page of Charlotte Lennox's famous novel "The Female Quixote", 1752, vol. 1.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Family and Intimate relationships Catherine Hubback
CH 's mother, born Mary Gibson, was simple, unaffected, and not highly educated. Jane Austen recorded Mary's enjoyment, during her first pregnancy, of a family reading of Charlotte Lennox 's Female Quixote, and later...
Friends, Associates Samuel Johnson
Johnson had a talent for friendship which he kept well exercised: the names mentioned here represent only a selection of his friendships. His early London friends, whom he met during a comparatively poorly documented period...
Friends, Associates Mary Jones
Samuel Johnson , visiting Oxford, boasted to MJ of the closeness of his friendship with Charlotte Lennox ; a few months later Jones wrote to Lennox, to say she would be visiting London soon.
Isles, Duncan. “The Lennox Collection (Continued)”. Harvard Library Bulletin, Vol.
19
, No. 1, Jan. 1971, pp. 36-60.
42-3
Friends, Associates Susannah Dobson
SD , along with the novelist Charlotte Lennox and Sylvia (Braithwaite) Thornton (the wife from 1768 of Bonnell Thornton ), belonged to a network of devoted friends centred on Lydia, Lady Clerke .
Perry, Ruth et al. “Introduction”. Henrietta, edited by Ruth Perry et al., University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
n39
Sylvia...
Friends, Associates Mary Jones
MJ corresponded with Charlotte Lennox and with publisher Ralph Griffiths and his wife Isabella . Her friendship was valued by literary men like Samuel Johnson , Joseph Spence , Thomas Warton , and apparently Bonnell Thornton
Friends, Associates Frances Reynolds
Many of FR 's friends were literary people who wrote down their flattering opinions of her. James Northcote , who lived in Joshua Reynolds 's house during the years 1771-5, wrote much praise of Frances...
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Montagu
The leading figures in the movement were Montagu herself (who spent freely in hospitality, and who was later dubbed the Queen of the Bluestockings or Queen of the Blues) and Carter (the most intellectually...
Intertextuality and Influence Frances Sheridan
Sidney Bidulph was also influential. It helped shape the depiction of unhappy marriage in Lennox 's Euphemia.
Catto, Susan J. Modest Ambition: The Influence of Henry Fielding, Samuel Richardson, and the Ideal of Female Diffidence on Sarah Fielding, Charlotte Lennox, and Frances Brooke. University of Oxford, 1998.
204
Though FS 's son Richard Brinsley claimed not to have read it, he borrowed from it...
Intertextuality and Influence Madeleine de Scudéry
MS was highly influential for women writers in English. Many of the women who wrote during the eighteenth century had grown up on her romances. Charlotte Lennox may appear to be stabbing MS in the...
Intertextuality and Influence Maria Edgeworth
Angelina, generally treated as a descendant of Charlotte Lennox 's Female Quixote, shows just how permeable is the boundary between ME 's juvenile and adult fiction. It warns against influence from the wrong...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Fielding
Other women novelists found this a fertile text. Critic Susan Catto suggested that the social ignorance of Lennox 's Arabella owes something to that of Ophelia. She also noted that at a ball the heroine...
Intertextuality and Influence Anne Grant
Charlotte Lennox is alluded to in this book (though AG gives her birth name wrongly as Massey),
Grant, Anne. Memoirs of an American Lady. Longman, Hurst, Rees and Orme, 1808, 2 vols.
1: 21n
along with the more highly-ranked Milton and Johnson (whose Life of Savage she echoes, without naming...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Murray
The first anecdote about the girls is sentimental in tone. The sweet and lovely Miss Menil reforms the eleven-year-old malicious telltale Miss Cummings by taking her part when she has done wrong. Miss Cummings, filled...
Intertextuality and Influence Sarah Green
The novel itself has elements of a spoof on the gothic, a didactic courtship plot, a social satire of the dialogue kind associated with Elizabeth Hamilton and Thomas Love Peacock , a sentimental melodrama, a...
Intertextuality and Influence Harriette Wilson
As a girl HW apparently cherished the ambition that one day she would write the female Gil Blas much as Charlotte Lennox had written The Female Quixote.
Wilson, Frances. The Courtesan’s Revenge. Faber, 2003.
17

Timeline

16 January 1605: Miguel de Cervantes published at Madrid the...

Writing climate item

16 January 1605

Miguel de Cervantes published at Madrid the first part of his immensely influential mock-romance Don Quixote; copies reached England by the summer.
Ungerer, Gustav. “Recovering Unrecorded Quixote Allusions in Ephemeral English Publications of the late 1650s”. Bodleian Library Record, Vol.
xvii
, No. 1, Apr. 2000, pp. 65-9.
65
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
16 January 2009

23 April 1705: The Tender Husband; or, The Accomplish'd...

Writing climate item

23 April 1705

The Tender Husband; or, The Accomplish'd Fool by Richard Steele opened on stage.
Steele, Sir Richard. The Plays of Richard Steele. Editor Kenny, Shirley Strum, Clarendon, 1971.
197, 202

By 22 May 1755: George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited...

Women writers item

By 22 May 1755

George Colman and Bonnell Thornton edited and published an anthology entitled Poems by Eminent Ladies.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
12: 512
Eger, Elizabeth. “Fashioning a Female Canon: Eighteenth-Century Women Poets and the Politics of the Anthology”. Women’s Poetry in the Enlightenment, The Making of a Canon 1730-1820, edited by Isobel Armstrong and Virginia Blain, St Martin’s Press, 1998, pp. 201-15.
210
Guest, Harriet. Small Change: Women, Learning, Patriotism, 1750-1810. University of Chicago Press, 2000.
86-7
Lavoie, Chantel Michelle. Poems by Eminent Ladies: A Study of an Eighteenth-Century Anthology. University of Toronto, 1999.
286-7

By July 1764: James Grainger published his georgic The...

Building item

By July 1764

James Grainger published his georgic The Sugar-Cane: A Poem; he advised slaves not to repine, on the grounds that others were even worse off.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
18 (1764): 170-2, 273-7
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press, 2000, 2 vols.
2: 1061
Carlile, Susan. “Expanding the Feminine: Reconsidering Charlotte Lennoxs Age and The Life of Harriot StuartEighteenth-Century Novel, edited by Albert J. Rivero and George Justice, Vol.
4
, 2005, pp. 103-37.
111-12

1768: The second of the two leading subscribers'...

Writing climate item

1768

The second of the two leading subscribers' or metropolitan libraries opened in Leeds.
Raven, James. Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Commerce in England, 1750-1800. Clarendon, 1992.
128-9
Poulson, Christine. “Hidden treasures”. The Author, Vol.
cxvii
, No. 4, 1 Dec.–28 Feb. 2006, pp. 145-6.
146

1774: The British Novelist: Or, Virtue and Vice...

Writing climate item

1774

The British Novelist: Or, Virtue and Vice in Miniature was published in twelve volumes of abridged texts by Sarah and Henry Fielding , Richardson , Smollett , and Lennox .
OCLC WorldCat. 1992–1998, http://www.oclc.org/firstsearch/content/worldcat/. Accessed 1999.

April 1774: The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah...

Women writers item

April 1774

The Monthly Review, in a notice on Hannah More 's The Inflexible Captive, quoted some lines which transform the Muses from ancient Greece into the living female poets of Britain.
Griffiths, Ralph, 1720 - 1803, and George Edward Griffiths, editors. Monthly Review. R. Griffiths.
50 (April 1774): 243-51

1777: Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses...

Women writers item

1777

Richard Samuel engraved his Nine Living Muses of Great Britain (or Portraits in the Character of the Muses in the Temple of Apollo) for Johnson's Ladies New and Polite Pocket Memorandum for 1778...

1780: James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as...

Writing climate item

1780

James Harrison (hitherto chiefly known as a music publisher) began to issue the handsomely-produced Novelists' Magazine, a weekly serial reprinting of canonical novels.
Shevlin, Elinor. “’It is the intention of the Editor’: Griffith’s, Harrison’s, and Cooke’s collections and the making of the English novel”. American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies (ASECS) Conference, New Orleans, LA, 21 Apr. 2001.
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Fleeman, John David, and James McLaverty. A Bibliography of the Works of Samuel Johnson. Clarendon Press, 2000, 2 vols.
2: 1023

January 1781-December 1782: The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties...

Writing climate item

January 1781-December 1782

The Lady's Poetical Magazine, or Beauties of British Poetry appeared, published by James Harrison in four half-yearly numbers; it is arguable whether or not it kept the first number's promise of generous selections of work...

By January 1821: Ballantyne's Novelists Library began publication;...

Writing climate item

By January 1821

Ballantyne's Novelists Library began publication; it was completed in 1824.
Quarterly Review. J. Murray.
24 (1821): 57

Texts

Lennox, Charlotte. Euphemia. T. Cadell and J. Evans, 1790, 4 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. Henrietta. A. Millar, 1758, 2 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. Hermione. Minerva Press, 1791, 4 vols.
Perry, Ruth et al. “Introduction”. Henrietta, edited by Ruth Perry et al., University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
La Vallière, Louise-Françoise de La Baume Le Blanc, duchesse de. Meditations and Penitential Prayers. Translator Lennox, Charlotte, J. Dodsley, 1774.
Beaumelle, Laurent Angliviel de la. Memoirs for the History of Madame de Maintenon. Translator Lennox, Charlotte, A. Millar, and J. Nourse . R. and J. Dodsley . L. Davis, and C. Reymer, 1757, 5 vols.
Sully, Maximilien de Bethune, duc de. Memoirs of Maximilien de Bethune. Translator Lennox, Charlotte, A. Millar; R. and J. Dodsley; W. Shropshire, 1756, 3 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. Old City Manners. T. Becket, 1775.
Lennox, Charlotte. Philander. Andrew Millar, 1758.
Lennox, Charlotte. Poems on Several Occasions. S. Paterson, 1747.
Lennox, Charlotte. Shakespear Illustrated. Andrew Millar, 1754, 3 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. Sophia. James Fletcher, 1762, 2 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. The Female Quixote. Andrew Millar, 1752, 2 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. The Female Quixote. Editors Dalziel, Margaret and Duncan Isles, Oxford University Press, 1970.
Brumoy, Pierre. The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy. Translator Lennox, Charlotte, Andrew Millar, 1759, 3 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. The History of Eliza. J. Dodsley, 1767, 2 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. The Lady’s Museum. John Newbery.
Lennox, Charlotte. The Life of Harriot Stuart. Payne and Bouquet, 1751, 2 vols.
The Memoirs of the Countess of Berci. Translator Lennox, Charlotte, A. Millar, 1756, 2 vols.
Lennox, Charlotte. The Sister. J. Dodsley, 1769.