I'll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald (review)

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Reviewed by: I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald Ben P. Robertson (bio) Annibel Jenkins, I’ll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2003. 596 pp. $39.95 (cloth). With I'll Tell You What: The Life of Elizabeth Inchbald, Annibel Jenkins has accomplished an ambitious task. Using information from a variety of sources, Jenkins has compiled what undoubtedly will become known as the authoritative biography of Elizabeth Inchbald (1753–1821). Well researched [End Page 119] and thoughtfully written, this biography provides the most complete overview of Inchbald's life since James Boaden published his Memoirs of Mrs. Inchbald in 1833 (London: Richard Bentley). Inchbald was a significant figure during the romantic period in Britain. She first came to the public's attention in the 1780s when she worked as an actor. For nearly a decade, she was a regular at the Covent Garden and the Haymarket Theatres in London, and she also performed in Scotland and Ireland (as well as provincially in England). Despite the limitations of an embarrassing speech impediment, she acquired a reputation as a good actor whom theatre managers consistently rehired to please a demanding public. When she tried her own hand at writing comedies and farces for the stage, she met with a surprising level of success that encouraged her to continue writing. Ultimately, she wrote around twenty plays, many of which were produced and published repeatedly. Inchbald also wrote two book-length fictions, A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796). A Simple Story achieved such popularity, in Britain and abroad, that it has never been out of print. In her later years, Inchbald became a literary critic, and her most ambitious critical project was to write prefaces to each of the 125 plays included in the series entitled The British Theatre. Given Inchbald's renown as an actor and writer, it may seem surprising that it has taken so long for someone to write a comprehensive biography. In part, the delay is a result of a longstanding critical tendency to favor male voices from the romantic period. Even more importantly, however, finding information about Inchbald's life has been especially challenging. On the advice of her confessor, Inchbald burned her own memoirs, and of the many pocket-book diaries on which James Boaden says he based his biography, all but eleven have been lost or destroyed. Two scholars, Samuel Littlewood (Elizabeth Inchbald and Her Circle. [London: O'Connor]) and Roger Manvell (Elizabeth Inchbald: England's Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th-Century London. [New York: University Press of America]), attempted biographies of Inchbald in 1921 and 1987 respectively, but their efforts were poorly documented and based largely on Boaden's Memoirs. The difficulty in finding material about Inchbald makes Jenkins's biography all the more impressive. Jenkins, like her predecessors, relies heavily on Boaden's work, but she goes beyond the mere quotation of secondary material. A true scholar, Jenkins has consulted the original sources—the remaining eleven pocket-book diaries, now housed in the Folger Shakespeare Library. She quotes frequently from the diaries to give Inchbald her own voice within the biography and to infuse the text with a vitality that evokes Inchbald's own humanity. Moreover, Jenkins has consulted Inchbald-related materials in the British Library and the York Minster Library. Jenkins is exemplary in her use of manuscripts from the Godwin, Shelley, and Edgeworth families. Inchbald's correspondence with these friends provides additional information that the author did not record in her diaries. Regrettably, Jenkins's biography contains no important surprises for Inchbald scholars. The lost pocket-books remain so, [End Page 120] and Jenkins did not uncover new correspondence or charred remnants of Inchbald's memoirs. She openly admits in several instances that the details of Inchbald's activities remain a "puzzle." However, Jenkins has managed to compile the most usable, most complete, and best documented biography of Inchbald. Jenkins surpasses even Boaden, who knew Inchbald and who had all of her papers as he wrote his own story of the writer's life. Jenkins's biography is meticulous—as detailed as possible—and...