Except for a volume of poems in 1747, it was not till after her marriage that Mrs. Lennox came forward prominently as an author. Her two-volume novel, _The Life of Harriet Stuart, Written by Herself_, appeared in 1751. But in literary circles she was evidently well known before this, for Johnson was her especial friend. When her manuscript was ready for publication, he arranged a celebration at his Club. The festivities were to last all night. Mrs. Lennox was ceremoniously crowned with laurel, and there was a magnificent hot apple-pie stuck with bay leaves.[360] This first novel is probably in part autobiographical inasmuch as the heroine, Harriet Stuart, is the daughter of a man of high official rank in America, and goes to England at fifteen to live with an aunt who becomes insane and leaves her penniless. But this is merely a slight framework for a series of love adventures. Miss Stuart's wit and beauty gather about her lovers of all varieties, army officers, sea-captains, pirates, merchants; and the alarming crises of her fate put her into close competition with Clarissa Harlowe herself. America, France, and England are the far-separated scenes of Miss Stuart's trials and victories, the emphasis being on her life in America. There would be a chance for some interesting local color in this representation of mid-eighteenth-century life in New York if the young lady could have spared a moment from her adventures to observe her surroundings. An Indian encampment, a visit to a fort, an escapade to a "farm," a midnight row on the Hudson, are mentioned, but with no comment. Towns and houses, roads, rivers, and seas, are but localities for love scenes, means of transit from one episode to another. The story is told with a deft manipulation of details and an easy fluency that would seem to indicate something of a previous literary apprenticeship. At any rate, in this novel she had found her medium, and she was soon ready with a tale that gave her genuine distinction. _The Female Quixote_ appeared in 1752 with a Dedication written by Johnson, and it was reviewed by him in _The Gentleman's Magazine_ for March. He said of it: "Mr. Fielding, however emulous of Cervantes, and jealous of a rival, acknowledges in his paper of the 24th, that in many instances, this copy excels the original, and though he has no connection with the author, he concludes his encomium on the work, by earnestly recommending it as a most extraordinary, and most excellent performance. 'It is,' says he, 'a work of true humour, and cannot fail of giving a rational, as well as a very pleasing amusement, to a sensible reader, who will at once be instructed, and highly diverted.'"[361] Johnson's name is still more intimately connected with the book, for he wrote the chapter which has the heading, "Being in the author's opinion, the best chapter in this history."[362] _Harriet Stuart_ reads like an echo of Richardson, but in _The Female Quixote_ Mrs. Lennox strikes an original note.