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Charlotte Ramsay Lennox |
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Charlotte Lennox, poet, playwright, novelist, and versatile woman of letters, was in her lifetime one of the most widely admired among a great crowd of minor female writers. She is still remembered and praised for The Female Quixote (1752), which continues to be ranked with the two or three finest of the numerous imitations of Cervantes to appear during the middle years of the eighteenth century. Lennox's contemporary Henry Fielding, himself the author of one such imitation in Joseph Andrews (1742), reviewed her work enthusiastically in his Covent-Garden Journal, and the terms of his endorsement in this review--probably the best thing of its kind Fielding ever wrote--have been echoed by later generations down to the present day.
Lennox was the friend of Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson, both of whom encouraged her, liked what she wrote, and in some instances helped her to publication. Their affection and assistance may have cost her any possibility of real friendships with or support from other prominent literary ladies, including Richardson's circle, the so-called bluestocking leaders of salon society, and later Fanny Burney, all of whom reacted to her with a certain jealous enmity.
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