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
death Thomas Holcroft
A subscription was got up for his widow and children: Elizabeth Inchbald contributed ten pounds.
Hazlitt, William et al. “Introduction”. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, edited by Elbridge Colby, Constable, 1925, p. 1: xv - lv.
liv
Family and Intimate relationships Maria Edgeworth
Maria mourned so intensely that she fell ill. She was pleased by a letter from Barbara Hofland recognising the very special nature of her loss; on the other hand she was offended at Elizabeth Inchbald
Friends, Associates Leah Sumbel
Mary Wells (later LS ) drew her female friends from both the theatre and the demi-monde: they included Elizabeth Sarah Gooch and Mary Robinson , as well as the highly respectable Elizabeth Inchbald .
Friends, Associates Charlotte Smith
Probably after Mary Wollstonecraft's death, CS became a friend of William Godwin , Elizabeth Inchbald , and Eliza Fenwick . Also a friend was the publisher Joseph Johnson .
Fletcher, Loraine. Charlotte Smith: A Critical Biography. Macmillan, 1998.
261, 288
Friends, Associates Susannah Dobson
SD , along with the novelist Charlotte Lennox and Sylvia (Braithwaite) Thornton (the wife from 1768 of Bonnell Thornton ), belonged to a network of devoted friends centred on Lydia, Lady Clerke .
Perry, Ruth et al. “Introduction”. Henrietta, edited by Ruth Perry et al., University Press of Kentucky, 2008.
n39
Sylvia...
Friends, Associates Mary Hays
This was her most formative and most famous friendship. She had approached Wollstonecraft after the latter published Vindication of the Rights of Woman early that same year. Wollstonecraft proved a valuable professional mentor. Another relationship...
Friends, Associates Mary Hays
After Wollstonecraft's death, and Fenwick's departure from England, it seems unlikely that MH found female friends to replace them, though she knew well such people as Elizabeth Inchbald , Anna Letitia Barbauld , and Charles
Friends, Associates Anne Plumptre
Elizabeth Inchbald had written in veiled terms to Morgan before the latter's marriage of her own brief and unhappy acquaintance (something like patronage) withAP . This experience (which, she says, was well known to...
Friends, Associates Mary Wollstonecraft
At this time MW 's achievements were admired by Southey , Coleridge , and many English Jacobins who felt themselves oppressed. Her friends included Elizabeth Inchbald , Mary Robinson , and more warmly Eliza Fenwick
Friends, Associates Amelia Opie
In London she met many artists, writers, and politically active reformists: as well as Godwin , she met Elizabeth Inchbald , Mary Wollstonecraft (who impressed her deeply, and trusted her enough to confide her plans...
Friends, Associates Anna Letitia Barbauld
Although their meetings were cordial, Lamb criticised her, as well as her writings, as an intellectual woman. He commented to Coleridge that (apart from Elizabeth Inchbald ) he found clever women impudent, forward, unfeminine, and...
Friends, Associates Amelia Opie
In 1813 she again met de Staël (who was visiting London) and introduced her to Elizabeth Inchbald . Others she met after her husband's death included Richard Brinsley Sheridan , Byron , and Sir Walter Scott
Friends, Associates Elizabeth Ogilvy Benger
At the same period EOB was a friend of another miscellaneous writer, Elizabeth Isabella Spence , who entertained in the same eccentric, low-budget style. These two elderly ladies (Spence was ten years older than Benger)...
Intertextuality and Influence Sophia King
The novel opens with a philosophical dialogue (between males) which makes reference to Voltaire , Hume , Rousseau , and Godwin 's Caleb Williams. Its subtitle sounds like a pointer to autobiographical content, and...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Meeke
This novel has unusual interest for modern writers in that it brings into concluding harmony not only Protestant and Catholic but also Jewish characters. The noble or upper-class families with which the story opens are...

Timeline

1 December 1759: John Hawkesworth in turn adapted Thomas Southerne's...

Building item

1 December 1759

John Hawkesworth in turn adapted Thomas Southerne 's dramatic adaptation of Aphra Behn 's Oroonoko, making it for the first time a solidly anti-slavery text.
Basker, James G. “Intimations of Abolitionism in 1759: Johnson, Hawkesworth, and OroonokoThe Age of Johnson, edited by Paul J. Korshin and Jack Lynch, Vol.
12
, AMS Press, 2001, pp. 47-66.
47, 48, 53-5, 57, 59

27 August 1784: Following the first balloon ascents of the...

Building item

27 August 1784

Following the first balloon ascents of the Montgolfierbrothers and Vincenzo Lunardi in November 1783, James Tytler made the first balloon ascent in Britain: he reached a height of 350 feet at Comely Gardens, Edinburgh...

June 1787: Thomas Bellamy launched The General Magazine...

Writing climate item

June 1787

Thomas Bellamy launched The General Magazine and Impartial Review, which continued with variations in subtitle until December 1792.
Gooch, Elizabeth Sarah, and Thomas Bellamy. “Biographical Particulars of the Author”. The Beggar Boy, Earle and Hemet, 1801, p. 1: i - xxxvi.
xxiii, xxvii, xxxvii

18 February 1792: Thomas Holcroft's play The Road to Ruin,...

Writing climate item

18 February 1792

Thomas Holcroft 's play The Road to Ruin, which Elizabeth Inchbald ranked among the most successful of modern plays,
Hazlitt, William et al. “Introduction”. The Life of Thomas Holcroft, edited by Elbridge Colby, Constable, 1925, p. 1: xv - lv.
xxvii-xxviii
had its premiere.
The London Stage 1660-1800. Southern Illinois University Press, 1960–1968, 5 vols.
5: 1428

14 June 1792: The title of radical novelist Robert Bage's...

Writing climate item

14 June 1792

The title of radical novelist Robert Bage 's anonymous Man As He Is, published this day, suggests the unpalatable truths revealed by reformers or satirists; it influenced later titles chosen by William Godwin and...

By 22 July 1797: William Beckford published a second and more...

Women writers item

By 22 July 1797

William Beckford published a second and more marked burlesque attack on women's writing: Azemia: A Descriptive and Sentimental Novel. Interspersed with Pieces of Poetry.
Beckford, William. Azemia. Sampson Low, 1797, 2 vols.
1: 21; 2: 43, 61, 236ff
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
2nd ser. 20 (1797): 470

1804: The publisher George, George, and John Robinson,...

Writing climate item

1804

The publisher George, George, and John Robinson , whose list of women writers had been distinguished, went bankrupt.
Burney, Sarah Harriet. The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney. Editor Clark, Lorna J., University of Georgia Press, 1997.
93 n1

Early 1818: William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets,...

Writing climate item

Early 1818

William Hazlitt opened On the Living Poets, the last of his Lectures on the English Poets, with a statement on gender issues.
Chandler, James. England in 1819: The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. University of Chicago Press, 1998.
112

11 October 1819: The Theatre Royal, Bury St Edmunds, owned...

Building item

11 October 1819

The Theatre Royal , Bury St Edmunds, owned by its architect, William Wilkins , opened as a state-of-the-art modern theatre.
Bury St Edmunds Theatre Royal. http://www.theatreroyal.org/.
Kuti, Elizabeth. Email to Orlando about conference, 19 April 2010.

April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...

Writing climate item

April 1879

James Murray —editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.
Winchester, Simon. The Meaning of Everything. Oxford University Press, 2003.
93, 107, 109

1994: Juggernaut was set up as a small New York...

Women writers item

1994

Juggernaut was set up as a small New York theatre company; in 2001 it decided to publicise the work of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century women playwrights.
Goreau, Angeline. “These Women Seduced By Wit”. New York Times, 9 Mar. 2003, p. Section 2: 7.

Texts

Inchbald, Elizabeth, and James Boaden. “A Case of Conscience”. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald, Richard Bentley, 1833, pp. 294-52.
Inchbald, Elizabeth, editor. A Collection of Farces and Other Afterpieces. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1809, 7 vols.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. A Simple Story. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1791, 4 vols.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. A Simple Story. Editors Tompkins, Joyce Marjorie Sanxter and Jane Spencer, Oxford University Press, 1988.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Animal Magnetism. P. Byron, 1789.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Appearance Is Against Them. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1785.
Baillie, Joanna, and Elizabeth Inchbald. De Monfort. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1807.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Every One Has His Fault. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1793.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. I’ll Tell You What. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1786.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. “Introduction”. A Simple Story, edited by Jane Spencer and Joyce Marjorie Sanxter Tompkins, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. vii - xxxiii.
Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von. Lovers’ Vows. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1798.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald. Editor Boaden, James, Richard Bentley, 1833, 2 vols.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Nature and Art. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1796, 2 vols.
Mercier, Louis-Sébastien, and Philippe Néricault Destouches. Next Door Neighbours. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1791.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. Such Things Are. G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788.
Inchbald, Elizabeth, editor. The British Theatre. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1808, 25 vols.
Genlis, Stéphanie-Félicité de. The Child of Nature. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1788.
Destouches, Philippe Néricault. The Married Man. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1789.
The Massacre. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1792.
Dumaniant, Antoine Jean Bourlin. The Midnight Hour. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1787.
Inchbald, Elizabeth, editor. The Modern Theatre. Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, 1811, 10 vols.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. The Mogul Tale. F. Powell, 1796.
Inchbald, Elizabeth. The Wedding Day. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1794.
Patrat, Joseph. The Widow’s Vow. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. J. and J. Robinson, 1786.
Kotzebue, August Friedrich Ferdinand von. The Wise Man of the East. Translator Inchbald, Elizabeth, G. G. and J. Robinson, 1799.