The Female Quixote

Glanville is concerned at her mistaken ideas, but continues to love her, while Sir George Bellmour, his friend, attempts to court her in the same chivalric language and high-flown style as in the novels.

This action might have been inspired by the French satire The Mock-Clielia, in which the heroine "rode at full speed towards the great Canal which she took for the Tyber, and wherein to she threw herself, that she might swim over in imitation of Clelia whom she believed herself to be".

The critical reception of The Female Quixote was generally favourable: its plot and elevated language, moral vision, and witty commentaries on romance novels were applauded.

[6] Dr. Johnson gave a party in honor of her first novel, The Life of Harriot Stuart, in which he served a "magnificent hot apple-pye ... and this he would have stuck with bay-leaves," and "further, he had prepared for her a crown of laurel, with which, but not till he had invoked the muses by some ceremonies of his own invention, he encircled her brows".

Ronald Paulson remarked that though at first the book seemed to focus "on the heroine's mind", it turned into an "intense psychological scrutiny of Arabella ... replaced by a rather clumsy attempt at the rapid satiric survey of society".