Henrietta

As an orphan under the care of her selfish aunt who pressures her to convert to Catholicism and enter a loveless marriage, Henrietta learns to live by her wits. Henrietta's story draws attention to the difficulty for women of earning a living in mid-eighteenthcentury England and offers readers strikingly insightful and modern reflections on human nature. Charlotte Lennox was a friend of both Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson and was generally admired by many of their contemporaries. A major influence on Jane Austen, Lennox is an innovator in the tradition of English women's fiction. Out of print since the late eighteenth century, Henrietta is now available in an edited and fully annotated modern edition.

A pioneer in the tradition of English women's fiction, Charlotte Lennox was valued friend to both Samuel Richardson and Samuel Johnson and a major influence on Jane Austen. The heroine of Charlotte Lennox's Henrietta is a young Englishwoman who resists her aunt's pressure to convert to Catholicism and is set adrift in London society. But unlike many of her passive, vulnerable contemporaries in fiction, the admirable Henrietta makes her way in the world relying on her own cleverness, conviction, and wit. This groundbreaking work of satire and human folly is republished here in a fully annotated modern edition.