Elizabeth Inchbald

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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.
Photograph of a painting of Elizabeth Inchbald by Thomas Lawrence, c. 1796. She is shown from the waist up, wearing a white cap atop light brown curls. Her dress is white, with a white collar, and the background is a rich brown. The bottom part of the picture is unfinished, only a few sketched lines on blank board.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Textual Features Leah Sumbel
Over the signature Old Kent, Mary Wells (later LS ) contributed to The World theatre criticism and reports of, for instance, the trial of Warren Hastings . She and her friend Elizabeth Inchbald supplied...
Publishing Catherine Hutton
CH wrote to the publisher Baldwin that Longman's had invited her to contribute to a female paper bearing the names of Barbauld , Inchbald , Edgeworth , and Hamilton .
Hutton, Catherine. Reminiscences of a Gentlewoman of the Last Century. Editor Beale, Catherine Hutton, Cornish Brothers.
159
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...
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 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.
Feminist Companion Archive.
Baillie...
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...
Literary responses Joanna Baillie
Mary Berry took the lead in promoting the volume.
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 Anne Plumptre
Kotzebue was then all the rage. The Critical Review discussed AP 's The Natural Son in December 1798, explaining the changes made in her version for stage presentation, and considering her biography of Kotzebue. But...
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...

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Texts

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