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. Though forced into domestic service, she does not become servile. Henrietta's story draws attention to the difficulty for women of earning a living in mid-eighteenth-century 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. Reviewers touted Henrietta as one of the best books of the 1750s. 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.

Charlotte Lennox (1730-1804) was an English novelist, poet, and playwright.

Ruth Perry, professor of literature at MIT, has written widely on women in eighteenth-century England. Her most recent book is Novel Relations: The Transformation of Kinship in English Literature and Culture, 1748-1818.

Susan Carlile, associate professor of English at California State University, Long Beach, has published articles in numerous journals and is writing a critical biography of Charlotte Lennox.