SOURCE: "Sexual Politics in Elizabeth Inchbald," in Studies in English Literature, 1500-1900, Vol. 34, No. 3, Summer, 1994, pp. 635-48.

In the following essay, Lott claims that Inchbald questioned the patriarchal social mores of late eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century Britain.

Of Elizabeth Inchbald's collection of biographical and critical prefaces to popular plays, her near-contemporary biographer James Boaden wrote: "There is something unfeminine . . . in a lady's placing herself in the seat of judgment."¹ Merely by acting as critic, Inchbald challenged basic assumptions about gender roles, and Boaden's reaction to the essays, he claims, is typical of the response Inchbald received. The essays, he asserts, "added but little to her fortune and nothing whatever to her fame."² Inchbald's contribution within a burgeoning circle of drama critics did indeed, as Boaden's dismissive remarks suggest, meet with a disappointing response from some of her male colleagues, particularly from George Colman the Younger and D-G (George...