Memoirs of Mrs Inchbald 2 Volume Set
Including her Familiar Correspondence with the Most Distinguished Persons of her Time

Published in 1833, this two-volume biography explores the lively personal, theatrical and literary life of an eighteenth-century actress and author.

James Boaden (Author)

9781108064996, Cambridge University Press

Multiple-component retail product, published 5 September 2013

788 pages, 1 b/w illus.
21.8 x 13.8 x 4.5 cm, 0.96 kg

Although she overcame a stammer to fulfil her acting ambitions, Elizabeth Simpson (1753–1821), known as Mrs Inchbald after her marriage in 1772, was more acclaimed for her good looks than her performances. Her husband was an actor, and she formed strong friendships with Sarah Siddons and John Philip Kemble, but her greatest impact was as a playwright, novelist, editor and critic. Despite her decision to destroy a four-volume autobiography, her extensive surviving journals and letters allowed James Boaden (1762–1839) to publish this two-volume work in 1833. Having produced biographies of Siddons, Kemble and Dorothy Jordan (which are also reissued in this series), Boaden presents here an informed account of this remarkable woman's personal, theatrical and literary life. Including as an appendix The Massacre (1792), a suppressed historical drama, Volume 1 covers the period from her birth to 1796. Volume 2 addresses her final decades and incorporates A Case of Conscience (1800), another previously unpublished play.

Volume 1: Advertisement
1. Importance of biography
2. Juvenile indiscretions
3. Revisits Standingfield
4. St Valleri
5. Peculiar feelings of actors
6. Year 1780
7. First appears in Bellario
8. Exercises herself on the pantomime as usual
9. Kemble takes her lodgings
10. The Morells
11. Fate of the Hue and Cry
12. The Simple Story
13. Publishes her novel
14. Splendid success
15. Begins a new comedy
Appendix. Volume 2: 1. The Priory at Stanmore again
2. The year 1798 commences with illness
3. The year of visits, 1801
4. The bidders for her memoirs
5. Invited to write in The Artist
6. Refuses to criticise
7. Sells again her two novels
8. Administers to her confessor's comforts
9. Her change of lodging
10. Mrs Inchbald's losses
11. Her Septembers since she married
12. Letters to her executrix
Appendix
Additional letters.

Subject Areas: British & Irish history [HBJD1]