A Simple Story - Softcover

Inchbald, Mrs Inchbald; Mrs Inchbald

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1438594003 ISBN 13: 9781438594002

Publisher: Book Jungle, 2010

Synopsis

Elizabeth Inchbald (1753 - 1821) was a British actress, novelist and dramatist. Between 1784 and 1805 she had nineteen of her comedies, sentimental dramas, and farces performed at London theatres. Inchbald's life was marked by tensions between, political radicalism, a passionate nature evidently attracted to a number of her admirers, and a love of independence pitted against her desire for social respectability and a strong attraction to authority figures. When Miss Milner announces her passion for her guardian, a Catholic priest, she breaks through the double barrier of his religious vocation and 18th-century British society's standards of proper womanly behavior. The story begins with the priest in London. "Dorriforth, bred at St. Omer's in all the scholastic rigour of that college, was, by education, and the solemn vows of his order, a Roman Catholic priest--but nicely discriminating between the philosophical and the superstitious part of that character, and adopting the former only, he possessed qualities not unworthy the first professors of Christianity. Every virtue which it was his vocation to preach, it was his care to practise; nor was he in the class of those of the religious, who, by secluding themselves from the world, fly the merit they might have in reforming mankind. He refused to shelter himself from the temptations of the layman by the walls of a cloister, but sought for, and found that shelter in the centre of London, where he dwelt, in his own prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance."

About this title

Review

"This is an ideal teaching edition. The full and lucid introduction considers both biographical and formal elements. Particularly welcome and valuable is the generous set of appendices; the first, providing extracts from Inchbald's own critical and dramatic writing, as well as from her pocket diaries, gives us a rounded and sympathetic view of the impressive variety of Inchbald's achievements as a writer, while the contemporary reviews contained in the second appendix give a good sense of the prevailing understanding of the novel as genre."--Aileen Douglas

"By situating A Simple Story against theatrical texts, Lott evokes the complexities of Inchbald's life--as woman, actor, novelist, playwright, and eventually critic--and thus challenges us to understand the work as an 'attempt to merge two forms, the novel and the play.' Examples of conduct literature demonstrate that Inchbald was an astute reader of gender construction, while accounts of divorce proceedings illustrate the reality of social consequences facing women who balked at the double standard for female behavior. Excerpts from period debates over the politics of authority remind us that the novel was completed as the French Revolution was beginning and that many of Inchbald's friends were shortly to be labeled Jacobin. This edition of Inchbald's most famous novel will prompt revisions in many an eighteenth-century syllabus."--Katherine Green

“This is an ideal teaching edition. The full and lucid introduction considers both biographical and formal elements. Particularly welcome and valuable is the generous set of appendices; the first, providing extracts from Inchbald’s own critical and dramatic writing, as well as from her pocket diaries, gives us a rounded and sympathetic view of the impressive variety of Inchbald’s achievements as a writer, while the contemporary reviews contained in the second appendix give a good sense of the prevailing understanding of the novel as genre.” — Aileen Douglas, Trinity College Dublin

“By situating A Simple Story against theatrical texts, Lott evokes the complexities of Inchbald’s life—as woman, actor, novelist, playwright, and eventually critic—and thus challenges us to understand the work as an ‘attempt to merge two forms, the novel and the play.’ Examples of conduct literature demonstrate that Inchbald was an astute reader of gender construction, while accounts of divorce proceedings illustrate the reality of social consequences facing women who balked at the double standard for female behavior. Excerpts from period debates over the politics of authority remind us that the novel was completed as the French Revolution was beginning and that many of Inchbald’s friends were shortly to be labeled Jacobin. This edition of Inchbald’s most famous novel will prompt revisions in many an eighteenth-century syllabus.” — Katherine Green, Western Kentucky University

"This is an ideal teaching edition. The full and lucid introduction considers both biographical and formal elements. Particularly welcome and valuable is the generous set of appendices; the first, providing extracts from Inchbald's own critical and dramatic writing, as well as from her pocket diaries, gives us a rounded and sympathetic view of the impressive variety of Inchbald's achievements as a writer, while the contemporary reviews contained in the second appendix give a good sense of the prevailing understanding of the novel as genre." -- Aileen Douglas, Trinity College Dublin

"By situating A Simple Story against theatrical texts, Lott evokes the complexities of Inchbald's life--as woman, actor, novelist, playwright, and eventually critic--and thus challenges us to understand the work as an 'attempt to merge two forms, the novel and the play.' Examples of conduct literature demonstrate that Inchbald was an astute reader of gender construction, while accounts of divorce proceedings illustrate the reality of social consequences facing women who balked at the double standard for female behavior. Excerpts from period debates over the politics of authority remind us that the novel was completed as the French Revolution was beginning and that many of Inchbald's friends were shortly to be labeled Jacobin. This edition of Inchbald's most famous novel will prompt revisions in many an eighteenth-century syllabus." -- Katherine Green, Western Kentucky University

From the Back Cover

After its publication in early 1791, A Simple Story was widely read in England and abroad, going into a second edition in March of the same year. The novel's young heroine, Miss Milner, scandalously declares herself in love with her guardian, Dorriforth, a Catholic priest. Dorriforth returns her love and is released from his vows. Though the pair go on to marry, the second half of the novel reveals the disastrous and far-reaching consequences of Miss Milner's subsequent adulterous affair.

The critical introduction to this Broadview edition considers such issues as Catholicism, theatricality, the theatre, and the masquerade, while the appendices provide a wide selection of cultural, biographical, and literary contexts for the novel.

Edition details

• Publisher: Book Jungle
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1438594003
• ISBN 13: 9781438594002
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 308