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,