Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Elizabeth Inchbald
-
Standard Name: Inchbald, Elizabeth
Birth Name: Elizabeth Simpson
Married Name: Elizabeth Inchbald
Pseudonym: Mrs Woodley
Nickname: Mrs Perfection
EI
was a diarist from her teens. Before and after her debut on as an actress on the London stage in 1780, she considered writing as a way to make a living. Before she had made any headway getting her first novel accepted, she became a prolific dramatist: she wrote or translated twenty-one plays (about half of them adaptations). Three major theatrical editing projects appeared under her name. In the early twenty-first century her reputation stands high both as novelist and dramatist.
Jane Oakwood's brother has only one woman author (Elizabeth Inchbald
) in his library; Jane on the other hand is a mine of information and opinion about several generations of a female literary tradition...
Publishing
Ann Radcliffe
It had been advertised in the London Chronicle on 22-4 April.
Norton, Rictor. Mistress of Udolpho: The Life of Ann Radcliffe. Leicester University Press.
93
The day after it appeared AR
's previous publisher, Hookham
, issued a whole clutch of related works: new editions of her first...
Publishing
Susanna Centlivre
It was published the following month, ascribed to the Author of The Gamester,
Monthly Catalogue, 1714 - 1717. Bernard Lintot.
1 (no. 1): 4
with a dedication to the future George I
. This political gamble (with Queen Anne
still on...
Hutton, Catherine. Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century. Editor Beale, Catherine Hutton, Cornish Brothers.
159
Occupation
Leah Sumbel
She received rave reviews for this first appearance, as Mrs Cadwallader in The Author (a burlesque portrayal of a woman writer). Later that summer she swashbuckled as Macheath in a famous transvestite production of Gay
Occupation
Mary Cowden Clarke
This production was put on (in London and later on tour) to raise money for what was later known as the Shakespeare Birthplace Trust
, to pay a Shakespeare curator at Stratford.
Schlueter, Paul, and June Schlueter, editors. An Encyclopedia of British Women Writers. Garland.
Before the...
Material Conditions of Writing
Catherine Gore
CG
was the first woman to achieve a professional career as a dramatist since Elizabeth Inchbald
and Hannah Cowley
. She had eleven plays (from one-act farce to high comedy) performed with varying success on...
Literary responses
Catherine Gore
Reviews, like that in the Athenæum, were good in the main, and singled out the dialogue for praise even if critical of the character drawing, the plotting, or the level of finish. The Times...
Literary responses
Ann Radcliffe
The Italian won for AR
the accolade of praise from Thomas James Matthias
, scholar, editor, and librarian at Buckingham Palace, who invoked the shade of Ariosto
to honour her in the same place...
Literary responses
Barbara Hofland
In the early 1820s BH
seems to have been at the apex of her career. She was appreciated not only by her friend Mary Russell Mitford
(who believed that nobody else could combine so much...
Literary responses
Hannah Cowley
Anna Seward
included HC
among her seven celebrated Female Poets
Gentleman’s Magazine. Various publishers.
59 (1789): 292
of the present day in April 1789. Recent critical comment on her includes an examination of her use of marriage law in...
Literary responses
Maria Edgeworth
Reviewers and ordinary readers devoted themselves at once to the game of identifying real-life originals for the novel's more obnoxious representatives of lawyers, clergymen, etc. Sydney Smith
took offence because he (wrongly) believed himself portrayed...
Literary responses
Joanna Baillie
In general JB
was criticised for lacking stage-craft—by Elizabeth Inchbald
, for example, who must have been a good judge. It was said that her sonorously-voiced passions float unanchored; her comedies are too sweet.
Baillie, Joanna. “Editorial Materials”. The Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, edited by Judith Bailey Slagle, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, pp. ix - xiv, 1.
11
Editing De Monfort for her British Theatre in 1808, Elizabeth Inchbald
wrote of the hero as a lunatic possessing every vice which pride engenders, yet...
Literary responses
Maria Theresa Kemble
First Faults received a condescending review in the June number of the Monthly Mirror. It was, however, enthusiastically welcomed in a poem by Martha Hale
, who encouraged MTK
to emulate playwright, actress, and...