SOURCE: Introduction to The Plays of Elizabeth Inchbald, Volume I, edited by Paula R. Backscheider, Garland Publishing, Inc., 1980, pp. ix-xlv.

In the following essay, Backscheider provides a historical account of Inchbald's career as a playwright and novelist.

Elizabeth Inchbald was a strange combination of consuming ambition and personal charm. In spite of a severe speech defect, she worked her way from the theatres of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Bristol, and York to Covent Garden, where in her first season she played such roles as Mariana in Measure for Measure, Lavinia in The Fair Penitent, and Anne Bullen in Henry VIII.¹ Her husband, the actor Joseph Inchbald, coached her as they traveled, and her vanity, impatience, and relentless demands led her biographer, James Boaden, to surmise that she must have felt remorse after his death.² By 1786, she was an established theatrical presence, soon to be the intimate of Colman, Kemble, Harris...