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
Intertextuality and Influence Judith Sargent Murray
She backs this pleasure in modernity with a remarkable grasp of former female history and of the women's literary tradition in English and its contexts. She mentions the Greek foremother Sappho , the patriotic heroism...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Thomas
Its title suggests purposeful allusion to a literary debate about the desirability of change and reform in the world. It specifically suggests allusion to Elizabeth Inchbald 's comedy Wives as They Were, and Maids as...
Intertextuality and Influence Mary Ann Kelty
Her narratives of these emotional involvements lead her into analysis of the different effects of love on the two sexes. This analysis is founded on two women writers (identifiable although she does not name them)...
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...
Leisure and Society Ann Radcliffe
Soon after returning from their European travels, AR and her husband went to a literary dinner given by her publisher George Robinson to celebrate the success of The Mysteries of Udolpho. Elizabeth Inchbald was...
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.
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...

Timeline

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Texts

Inchbald, Elizabeth. Wives as They Were, and Maids as They Are. G. G. and J. Robinson, 1797.