SOURCE: "The Technique of Her Novels" and "The Art of Her Novels," in Elizabeth Inchbald: Novelist, The Catholic University of America, 1935, pp. 55-74 and 75-102.

In the excerpt that follows, McKee examines the plot design and character development of A Simple Story and Nature and Art. (Only those footnotes pertaining to the excerpt below have been reprinted.)

The Broken Plot of a Simple Story

We turn now to an examination of those theories set forth by critics in explanation of what they consider Mrs. Inchbald's sacrifice of unity in A Simple Story. The reader will remember that, in reviewing events of this novel, attention was called to a break in the narrative and to the lapse of seventeen years between the first and second half of the work. The first to undertake an explanation of this cesura was James Boaden. In various parts of the Memoirs he has...