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.
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...
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...
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
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
Textual Features
Charlotte McCarthy
Here CMC
voices various complaints: of sufferings caused by the Dearness of Provisions, of the impossibility of women's earning a living, of the nation's wickedness, the decline of charity, the prevalence of atheists, and of...
Textual Features
Anna Letitia Barbauld
The series has a general introduction, On the Origin and Progress of Novel-Writing, and a Preface, Biographical and Critical for each novelist, which in its echo of the full and original title of Johnson's...
Mitford, Mary Russell. The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Told by Herself in Letters To Her Friends. Editor L’Estrange, Alfred Guy Kingham, Harper and Brothers.
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...
Textual Features
Catherine Hutton
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...
Textual Production
Eliza Parsons
It shared the bill (which was given for the benefit of actress Isabella Mattocks
) with Elizabeth Inchbald
's The Child of Nature (adapted from Genlis
) and The Soldier's Festival; or, The Night before...
Textual Production
Jane Austen
John Murray
was apparently planning a collected edition of JA
's novels in 1831, when Cassandra Austen
wrote on 20 May with detailed queries about it, but the project did not go through. A year...
Textual Production
Sarah Scudgell Wilkinson
SSW
, or her publishers, did not always acknowledge the sources of her popular works. Indeed, the claim to be An Original Romance was at least once made fraudulently. John Bull; or, The Englishman's Fire-Side...
Textual Production
Phebe Gibbes
PG
's next novel, The History of Miss Sommerville, published as a Lady, has not been widely attributed to her; someone ascribed it to Mrs Inchbauld (which the date makes impossible) in the...
