Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821)
Bernadette Hand with Mary A. Waters
May 2023
Novelist and playwright Elizabeth Inchbald was born the eighth of nine children on October 15, 1753 to John and Mary Simpson, a prosperous recusant Catholic farming family in Stanningfield, Suffolk, England. Elizabeth and her sisters were educated at home, while her two brothers were sent to school. Elizabeth enjoyed writing during her youth, and throughout her childhood her mother would often take the family to the nearby Bury theatre to see plays given by the Norwich Theatre Company. These outings and the plays read at home with her siblings excited the young Elizabeth Simpson who, despite a stammer, was determined to become an actress. Against her family’s wishes, in April of 1772 Elizabeth went to London to seek her fortune on the stage. Young, pretty, and naïve, the 18-year-old Elizabeth was nearly assaulted by one of the stage managers during her search for work. Her failure to find work and her need of protection against sexual advances led Elizabeth to marry a fellow Catholic, Joseph Inchbald, on June 9, 1772. Though he was nineteen years her senior with two sons who often caused tension between them, the Inchbalds’ marriage was a happy one.
Following their marriage, Joseph Inchbald found work in the Bristol theatre company, and for the next six years he and Elizabeth were traveling players. Highly independent, Elizabeth preferred to keep her own rooms and maintain her own finances, which she did with meticulous care throughout her life. Meanwhile, the Inchbalds became acquainted with many actors who would later enjoy much esteem, forging close friendships with the future manager of Covent Garden, John Kemble, and his tragedienne sister, Sarah Siddons. During this time, Elizabeth renewed her childhood interest in writing. Working on her first novel, Inchbald took inspiration from those around her, basing A Simple Story’s main character partly on the young Kemble. She also taught herself French and, with her husband, went to France for two months during summer 1776, where she improved her language skills, later enabling her to translate and adapt popular French plays for the English stage. These early years were essential in forming Inchbald’s understanding of the stage, its players, and the audience, providing her with indispensable knowledge for her future writings.
This period of her life came to an abrupt end when her husband died suddenly on June 6, 1779. His death was very difficult for Elizabeth who, as her biographer Annibel Jenkins puts it, “never forgot that ‘day of horror’” (p. 49). Despite their unconventional marriage, the Inchbalds cared deeply for each other. Known for her beauty and wit, Elizabeth Inchbald often received suitors and proposals but never remarried. She remained with the Wilkinson and York Company until September 1780, when she once again moved to London, beginning work at The Theatre Royal Covent Garden. She first appeared there on October 3 as Bellario in Beaumont and Fletcher’s Philaster. For the next four years before her first play The Moguls’ Tale was accepted and performed in 1784, Inchbald spent her time acting, writing, and enjoying a vibrant social life. With her first play’s success, she began to gain more recognition, and many subsequent plays were met with great approbation. These plays, full of biting wit and insightful observations about domestic and marital issues, often satirized events, people, and issues that were in the public focus.
By the mid-1780s, Inchbald had become a prominent figure in London society. Using her knowledge of society news, politics, and theatre gossip, she began in 1787 to write under the pseudonym “The Muse” for The World, a popular social periodical. In 1789, Inchbald retired from acting to focus on her writing. With the publication in 1791 of her first novel, A Simple Story, she gained celebrity in broader literary circles, and in 1792 she was invited to Windsor, where she visited with the king and princesses. That same year, Inchbald met William Godwin and began associating with his group of political progressives, including Thomas Holcroft. whose views resulted in a three-month imprisonment for treason in 1794. Inchbald’s evolving political opinions prompted the writing of her most radical play, The Massacre, in 1792. Though she had the play printed, she quashed it on the advice of friends, and it remained suppressed until well after her death. In the Godwin circle, Inchbald’s already progressive views about marriage became more pronounced, taking a more prominent position in her later plays. The successful and ironic Everyone Has His Faults (1793), in which she subtly advocates for independence within marriage, is the most noteworthy of these.
Inchbald’s next few years were steeped in political and personal strife as she publicly defended Everyone Has His Faults from criticism; aided many friends and family in financial difficulties; buried a brother, a sister, and two close friends; and published her less successful and more politically charged second novel, Nature and Art (1796). Inchbald and Godwin’s friendship deteriorated following a mordant public joke directed by Inchbald at Godwin’s new wife, Mary Wollstonecraft, after the marriage made it clear that Wollstonecraft had until then been lying about her marital status. Wollstonecraft died in childbirth six months later, and Inchbald’s friendship with Godwin never returned to its former level of familiarity, cooling her career as a political progressive. As the turn of the century approached, Inchbald translated and adapted two plays by August von Kotzebue, including Lovers’ Vows, the play that threw the Bertram family into chaos in Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park (1814). In these and subsequent plays, Inchbald continued to draw attention to social issues and questions surrounding domestic happiness and marriage.
The turn of the century was slow in terms of writing for Inchbald. Her translation of the French play Jugement de Soloman by Caigniez was anticipated by James Boaden’s version, making hers obsolete. Inchbald’s last play, To Marry or Not to Marry, was performed at Covent Garden in 1805. After her withdrawal from play writing, Inchbald began work on her Remarks for The British Theatre. From 1806 to 1808, Inchbald wrote 125 short introductory commentaries that were published serially with the play’s text, then compiled into the 1808 twenty-five volume edition. Her contributions were unique and insightful, bringing her stage experience to bear in comments on stagecraft, performance, and audience reception. The project was a success, but while it was in progress, George Colman the Younger published highly critical and stereotypically misogynistic remarks about Inchbald, alleging her inadequacy as a literary scholar and critic. Inchbald responded, publicly defending her work in her characteristic witty fashion. Her response was printed alongside Colman’s critique, bringing the series more public attention and boosting sales. Inchbald found the work trying, however, and never again wrote literary criticism, perhaps partly because for the same pay, she could simply select plays to be printed under her name. She this did for Collection of Farces and Afterpieces (1809) and The Modern Theatre (1811). Her only other critical works are two articles in The Artist, one from 1808 ironically prescribing how to write a successful novel, and another in 1809 defending the theatres after both Covent Garden and Drury Lane burned to the ground only five months apart.
As Inchbald’s once vibrant social circle slowly diminished, she led an increasingly secluded life, away from both the theatres and the public eye. Her health declined, and she returned to the faith of her childhood, often attending daily Mass. Though more reclusive, she continued to correspond with friends while working on her memoir, which she burned before she died. In 1819 Elizabeth Inchbald moved into Kensington House, operated at the time as a Catholic boarding establishment. Here she died at age 67 on August 1, 1821. In 1833, twelve years following her death, her one-time rival, James Boaden published Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald, which included much of her correspondence and two previously unpublished plays, The Massacre and A Case of Conscience. More recently, Roger Manvell published Elizabeth Inchbald (1987) and Annibel Jenkins published a 2003 biography entitled I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald. A three-volume edition of The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald, edited by Ben P. Robertson, appeared in 2007.
Elizabeth Inchbald was successful as an actor and highly regarded as a playwright during her lifetime, and many of her works continued to enjoy successful performance through much of the Victorian period. Her novels are now enthusiastically read and frequently taught, especially A Simple Story. And her theater criticism is just beginning to garner the attention it deserves, both for its innovative approach and its contribution to making Inchbald one of the most significant figures in Romantic period British theatrical history.
Further Reading
Boaden, James, ed. Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald: Including Her Familiar Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Persons of Her Time. To Which Are Added The Massacre and A Case of Conscience; Now First Published from Her Autograph Copies, 2 vols., Richard Bentley, 1833.
Jenkins, Annibel. I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald, University Press of Kentucky, 2003.
Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th Century London, a Biographical Study, University Press of America, 1987.
Robertson, Ben P. The Diaries of Elizabeth Inchbald, 3 vols., Pickering and Chatto, 2007./p>
Robertson, Ben P. Elizabeth Inchbald's Reputation: A Publishing and Reception History, Routledge, 2013.
Dictionary of National Biography (1885–1900)
INCHBALD, ELIZABETH (1753–1821), novelist, dramatist, and actress, the youngest but one of the numerous children of John Simpson, a farmer and a Roman catholic, and his wife Mary, was born at Stanningfield, near Bury St. Edmunds in Suffolk, on 15 Oct. 1753 (Boaden; 16th, Haydn, Index). After the death of her father on 15 April 1761 she picked up such education as she could obtain from books, and after her brother George went on the stage she applied without success in 1770 to Richard Griffith, manager of the Norfolk theatre, for an engagement as actress, a profession for which a serious impediment in her speech seemed to disqualify her. After brief visits to London and elsewhere, in the course of which she made the acquaintance of various people connected with the stage and coquetted with proposals from her future husband, she left home abruptly and without warning on 11 April 1772 to seek her fortune. Endowed with much beauty and very slenderly furnished with money, she underwent various adventures, real or imaginary, in London, where she applied in turn to Reddish and to King. From James William Dodd [q.v.], through whom she sought to obtain an engagement, she received dishonouring proposals, by which she was thoroughly frightened, and which she resented with characteristic impetuosity. Feeling the need of a protector, she married Joseph Inchbald, an actor and portrait painter, on 9 June 1772, at the house of her sister, Mrs. Slender, through the agency of a catholic priest named Rice, and on the following day was married again in church according to protestant rites. This second marriage cast some suspicion upon the statement that her husband was a catholic. On the day of his marriage Inchbald is said—probably in error, since the part, according to Genest, was played by Reddish—to have enacted Mr. Oakley in the 'Jealous Wife.' The following day, 11 June 1772, she started with him for Bristol, where, after some delays, she at length appeared on the stage, 4 Sept., as Cordelia to her husband's Lear. She then visited Scotland, and repeated Cordelia at Glasgow to her husband's Lear, 26 Oct. 1772, and on 6 Nov. played Anne Bullen in ' Henry VIII ' to her husband's Cranmer and the Wolsey of West Digges, her manager. In Edinburgh she appeared, 29 Nov., as Jane Shore, playing subsequently Calista in the 'Fair Penitent.' In the following year she appeared as Calphurnia, Lady Anne in 'Richard III,' Lady Percy, Lady Elizabeth Grey in the 'Earl of Warwick' Fanny in the' Clandestine Marriage,' Desdemona, Aspasia in 'Tamerlane,' Mrs. Strictland in the 'Suspicious Husband,' and the Tragic Muse in the 'Jubilee.' From Edinburgh or Glasgow she visited Dundee, Aberdeen, and various other Scottish towns, playing a large number of characters, among which were Juliet, Imogen, Violante in the 'Wonder,' Monimia in the 'Orphan,' and Sigismunda. She also took lessons in French, and practised painting. Her journeys were taken in the roughest fashion, sometimes on foot. On 2 July 1776, after her husband had quarrelled with the Edinburgh public, she took ship with him from Shields for Saint Valery, and went to Paris, where Inchbald vainly sought occupation as a painter, and his wife conceived the notion of writing comedies. Returning to Brighton on 19 Sept. she proceeded on the 30th to London, and on 4 Oct. by Chester to Liverpool,where she made the acquaintance of Mrs. Siddons, which ripened into friendship, and played on 18 Oct. Juliet, followed by Cleopatra in ' All for Love,' &c. While here and at Manchester she made many applications to Tate Wilkinson, which were ultimately successful, and wrote the first outline of 'A Simple Story.' Mrs. Inchbald and her husband here also formed their close friendship with John Philip Kemble, who sat for his portrait to Inchbald. After a visit to Canterbury, the pair reached York in January 1778, and were treated with much friendliness by Tate Wilkinson. She acted in York, Leeds, and other Yorkshire towns, and was well received in Yorkshire society. On 6 June 1779 her husband died suddenly, under painful circumstances (see Tate Wilkinson, The Wandering Patentee, ii. 56-9). Inchbald, as an actor, although little seen in London, stood high in favour in comic old men, Justice Credulous, Sir Anthony Absolute, &c., and did some scene-painting for Tate Wilkinson, who had a warm regard for him as a friend and an actor ( ib. i. 277). A son George, not by Mrs. Inchbald, was also a member of Tate Wilkinson's company, and George's wife subsequently played in Bath. Inchbald was buried in Leeds, John Philip Kemble, who contemplated marrying his widow, writing a long Latin epitaph for his tombstone, and dedicating to his memory a poem palpably imitated from Collins.
On 14 June 1779 a performance was given at Leeds for Mrs. Inchbald's benefit. She acted her old characters in Wakefield and Doncaster in September, her first part after her bereavement being Andromache, and finished writing ' A Simple Story.' The following year she refused offers of from 'Dicky' Suett and others, began a new play, and obtained a long-coveted engagement from Harris for Covent Garden. She quitted the York company 19 Sept. 1780. As Bellario in 'Philaster,' to the Philaster of Lewis and the Arethusa of Mrs. Mattocks, she made on 3 Oct. 1780, at Covent Garden, her first appearance in London, but failed to attract much attention. Other characters followed, including Mrs. Strictland, Queen in 'Richard III,' Mariana in ' Measure for Measure,' Constantia in the ' Chances,' and many others. Her salary rose from 1l. 6s. 8d. per week to 3l. She appeared at the Haymarket on 16 July 1782 as Emma Cecil in the ' East Indian.' She quitted the Hay market on 16 Sept. 1782, acted a month at Shrewsbury, and opened in Dublin in November as Bellario, returning to London in the following spring. She resumed acting at Covent Garden at an augmented salary, and retired from the stage, where her success was never great, in 1789. According to Genest, her last appearance was on 14 May 1789, when she acted Mrs. Blandish in the 'Heiress' at Covent Garden Theatre.
Mrs. Inchbald had at an early date written farces, but when she first sent her manuscripts to Harris and to Colman neither manager took any notice of them. In the summer of 1782, however, Harris accepted a play from her, and gave her 20l. on account. Colman agreed on 7 March 1784 to give her one hundred guineas for 'The Mogul Tale, or the Descent of the Balloon,' and produced it at the Haymarket 6 July 1784, with much success. It was not apparently printed until 1824. Mrs. Inchbald played a small part, in which she all but broke down. Colman produced, on 4 Aug. 1785 (8vo, 1786), her 'I'll tell you what,' a five-act play which greatly augmented her reputation; her manager wrote both prologue and epilogue. On 22 Oct. Harris gave at Covent Garden her 'Appearance is against them' (8vo, 1785). Her subsequent dramatic productions consisted of: 1. 'The Widow's Vow,' an adaptation of 'L'heureuse Erreur' of Patrat (8vo, 1786), Haymarket, 20 June 1786. 2. 'All on a Summer Day,' Covent Garden, 15 Dec. 1787, damned the first night, and not printed. 3. 'Such things are,' a comedy, Covent Garden, 10 Feb. 1787 (8vo, 1788). 4. 'The Midnight Hour,' a comedy, Covent Garden, 22 May 1787 (8vo, 1788), from the French of Damaniant. 5. ' Animal Magnetism,' a farce, Covent Garden, 26 May 1788, eighth performance (12mo, 1789 ?). 6. ' The Child of Nature,' Covent Garden, 28 Nov. 1788 (8vo, 1788), from Madame de Genlis. 7. 'The Married Man,' Haymarket, 15 July 1789 (8vo, 1789), from 'Le Philosophe Marié' of Destouches. 8. 'Hue and Cry,' farce, Drury Lane, 11 May 1791, from the French, not printed. 9. 'Next-door Neighbours,' Haymarket, 9 July 1791 (8vo, 1791), from 'L'Indigent' of Mercier and ' Le Dissipateur of Destouches. 10. 'Young Men and Old Women,' Haymarket, 30 June 1792, from the French, not printed. 11. 'Every one has his Fault,' Covent Garden, 29 Jan. 1793 (8vo, 1793; attacked in the 'True Briton,' and successfully defended by the author). 12. ' The Wedding Day,' a comedy, Drury Lane, third time, 4 Nov. 1794 (8vo, 1794). 13. 'Wives as they were, and Maids as they are,' Covent Garden, 4 March 1797 (8vol, 1797). 14. ' Lovers' Vows,' Covent Garden, 11 Oct. 1798 (8vo, 1798), from Kotzebue. 15. 'Wise Man of the East,' Covent Garden, 30 Nov. 1799 (8vo, 1799), from Kotzebue. 16. 'To Marry or not to Marry,' comedy, Covent Garden, 16 Feb. 1805 (8vo, 1805). 'The Massacre' and 'A Case of Conscience' were printed from her manuscripts by Boaden with the ' Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald 'in 1833. Most of these pieces are translations, and some of them are trifling enough. Those which are original are chiefly improbable, but display power of characterisation and command of dialogue.
Mrs. Inchbald's great romance, by which she is principally known, 'A Simple Story,' was finished by her at her lodgings in Frith Street, and was published, 4 vols. 12mo, 10 Feb. 1791. It obtained an immediate success, a second edition being ordered on 1 May. For the copyright she received 200l. In spite of the break in the middle, which practically divides it into two parts, and of the unexpected frailty of the heroine, it is a supremely tender and touching work, written with much happiness of style, and giving a very lively portraiture of character. It exercised a powerful influence; it was one of the earliest examples of the novel of passion, and seems to some extent to have inspired 'Jane Eyre.' 'Nature and Art,' an able but inferior story, followed in 1796, 2 vols. 12mo. In 1806-9 she edited 'The British Theatre,' in 25 vols., with biographical and critical remarks. Though sensible in the main, her observations upon various plays involved her in disputes with George Colman the younger and others. The contents of the `Modern Theatre,' 10 vols. 1809, and 'A Collection of Farces,' 7 vols. 1809, were simply selected by her. When in 1808 John Murray was starting the 'Quarterly,' under the guidance of Gifford and Walter Scott, he was most anxious to secure Mrs. Inchbald as a contributor, and it was only her extreme diffidence which led her after some hesitation to decline the offer (Smiles, Mem. of John Murray, i. 122). She contributed, however, to the 'Edinburgh Review,' and received 50l. for her first article, or, as she said, 'for five minutes' work.' The prices paid her for literary work were invariably high. She received, indeed, from Harris as much as 600l. for a single play. She invested her money so as to secure herself a yearly independent income of over 260 l.; but, equally prudent and generous, she gave large sums to various members of her family. Mrs. Inchbald died Wednesday, 1 Aug. 1821, at Kensington House, and was buried on the 4th in Kensington churchyard. The memoirs of her life, for which she had been offered 1,000l., were by her peremptory injunction destroyed at her death; in this matter she acted on the advice of Bishop Poynter. Her will was signed 29 April 1821. In all she left about 6,000l. In her private life she was blameless, though she was given to sentimental attachments, and, despite her anxiety to marry again, she declined many offers, some of them advantageous. She died a devout Roman catholic. Singularly fascinating and gracious, although a little apt to take and give offence, she was very popular in both literary and fashionable society (cf. Clayden, Rogers and his Contemporaries, i. 4, 46). William Godwin's daughter, Mrs. Shelley, wrote in a notice of considerable interest 'relative to Mrs. Inchbald ' that she had heard a rival beauty complain that when Mrs. Inchbald came into the room and sat in a chair in the middle of it, as was her wont, every man gathered round it, and it was vain for any other woman to attempt to gain attention. Godwin admired her greatly. (He used to describe her as a piquante mixture between a lady and a milkmaid, and added that Sheridan declared she was the only authoress whose society pleased him' (Kegan Paul, Godwin i. 74). Her beauty she retained until late in life, and she always dreaded its loss. According to an account penned by an admirer which she preserved in her papers, and endorsed 'Description of Me,' she was handsome in figure, but stiff; above the middle height; fair, but a little freckled, and 'with a tinge of sand, which is the colour of her eyelashes; no bosom; hair of a sandy auburn; … face beautiful in effect and beautiful in every feature; … countenance full of spirit and sweetness, excessively interesting, and, without indelicacy, voluptuous; … dress always becoming and very seldom worth so much as eight-pence.'
A portrait of her was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence, and one by W. Porter was exhibited in the Royal Academy. A third, by Harlowe, is in the Garrick Club, where is also a representation of her, by De Wilde, as Lady Jane Grey. Most of her plays have been reprinted in collections, such as those of Cumberland, Oxberry, Lacy, and 'The London Stage.' Her 'I'll tell you what' was translated into German, Leipzig, 1798, and her stories were more than once translated into French. Of 'A Simple Story' and 'Nature and Art ' many editions have appeared, one, with a memoir by William Bell Scott, being published in 1880. Both works are in the 'Collection of British Novelists,' Thomas Button, author of the 'Dramatic Censor,' 1801, in which Mrs. Inchbald is freely handled, wrote 'a satirical poem' on her entitled 'The Wise Men of the East, or the Apparition of Zoroaster, the Son of Oromases, to the Theatrical Midwife of Leicester Fields.'
[The chief authority for the life of Mrs. Inchbald is the Memoir by James Boaden, 2 vols. 1833. Boaden seems to have had access to her correspondence, and to have seen in manuscript portions of her diary. Most of the magazines of the last century supplied biographies more or less untrustworthy, which were copied into the theatrical biographies of the early years of this century. In works such as Peake's Colman, Dunlap's Cooke, Fanny Kemble's Records of a Girlhood, Forster's Goldsmith, and the Life of F. Reynolds are many particulars concerning her. Tate Wilkinson rhapsodises over her beauty and virtues in the Wandering Patentee. Genest's Account of the Stage; the Biographia Dramatica; the Georgian Era; Gillow's Bibl. Dict. iii. 532; New Monthly Magazine, 1821; Rose's Biog. Dict.; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Lowndes's Bibl. Man. may be consulted.]
J. K.
Encyclopædia Britannica 11th edition (1911)
NCHBALD, MRS ELIZABETH (1753–1821), English novelist, playwright and actress, was born on the 15th of October 1753 at Standingfield, Suffolk, the daughter of John Simpson, a farmer. Her father died when she was eight years old. She and her sisters never enjoyed the advantages of school or of any regular supervision in their studies, but they seem to have acquired refined and literary tastes at an early age. Ambitious to become an actress, a career for which an impediment in her speech hardly seemed to qualify her, she applied in vain for an engagement; and finally, in 1772, she abruptly left home to seek her fortune in London. Here she married Joseph Inchbald (d. 1779), an actor, and on the 4th of September made her début in Bristol as Cordelia, to his Lear. For several years she continued to act with him in the provinces. Her rôles included Anne Boleyn, Jane Shore, Calista, Calpurnia, Lady Anne in Richard III., Lady Percy, Lady Elizabeth Grey, Fanny in The Clandestine Marriage, Desdemona, Aspasia in Tamerlane, Juliet and Imogen; but notwithstanding her great beauty and her natural aptitude for acting, her inability to acquire rapid and easy utterance prevented her from attaining to more than very moderate success. After the death of her husband she continued for some time on the stage; making her first London appearance at Covent Garden as Bellario in Philaster on the 3rd of October 1780. Her success, however, as an author led her to retire in 1789. She died at Kensington House on the 1st of August 1821.
Mrs. Inchbald wrote or adapted nineteen plays, and some of them, especially Wives as They Were and Maids as They Are (1797), were for a time very successful. Among the others may be mentioned I’ll tell you What (translated into German, Leipzig, 1798); Such Things Are (1788); The Married Man; The Wedding Day; The Midnight Hour; Everyone has his Fault; and Lover’s Vows. She also edited a collection of the British Theatre, with biographical and critical remarks (25 vols., 1806–1809); a Collection of Farces (7 vols., 1809); and The Modern Theatre (10 vols., 1809). Her fame, however, rests chiefly on her two novels: A Simple Story (1791), and Nature and Art (1796). These works possess many minor faults and inaccuracies, but on the whole their style is easy, natural and graceful; and if they are tainted in some degree by a morbid and exaggerated sentiment, and display none of that faculty of creation possessed by the best writers of fiction, the pathetic situations, and the deep and pure feeling pervading them, secured for them a wide popularity.
Mrs Inchbald destroyed an autobiography for which she had been offered £1000 by Phillips the publisher; but her Memoirs, compiled by J. Boaden, chiefly from her private journal, appeared in 1833 in two volumes. An interesting account of Mrs Inchbald is contained in Records of a Girlhood, by Frances Ann Kemble (1878). Her portrait was painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence.