SOURCE: "Britain's First Woman Drama Critic: Elizabeth Inchbald," in Curtain Calls: British and American Women and the Theater, 1660-1820, edited by Mary Anne Schofield and Cecilia Macheski, Ohio University Press, 1991, pp. 277-90.

In the essay that follows, Rogers examines Inchbald's role as a professional drama critic, focusing on the difficulties she faced as one of the first female critics and what her criticism reveals about her own literary work.

When the publisher Longman decided, in October 1805, to bring out a collection of 125 current acting plays, he asked the popular dramatist Elizabeth Inchbald to provide biographical-critical prefaces. It was an unconventional request for the time, for while women were commonly allowed the fancy and sentiment which produce imaginative literature, they were supposed to lack the judgment required for criticism. Even though Inchbald exerted herself to find merit and soften strictures, especially in the plays of living authors (many of...