Until Frances Chamberlaine Sheridan was in her late teens, she had never seen or even read a play, but the theater was to play a major role in the rest of her life. Her own role in the history of the theater is small but significant: her plays were an important influence on the comedies of her son Richard Brinsley Sheridan, and the reception of her two comedies which reached the stage reveals much about the public's taste at the time, especially its attitude toward feminist ideas.

She was born in Dublin, the youngest of five children of the Reverend Dr. Philip Chamberlaine and Anastasia Whyte; her mother did not live long after Frances's birth. She was never a pretty child, and her physical unattractiveness was increased by an accident, occurring when she was "an infant," that left her lame for life, as her biographer and granddaughter, Alicia...