A Simple Story

A Simple Story is the 1791 first novel by Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821), the English actress turned playwright and novelist, and one of the most admired English novels of its decade. The book falls in two movements: the courtship of the spirited, faulty Miss Milner and her guardian Dorriforth, a Catholic priest released from his vows to become Lord Elmwood, and then, a generation later, the suffering of their daughter Matilda under her father’s unforgiving exile after her mother’s adultery. Inchbald’s psychological acuteness, dramatic scene-building, and the novel’s analysis of female education drew praise from contemporaries and from later critics; Maria Edgeworth declared no book had moved her more. The novel keeps a place in the canon of eighteenth-century English fiction and of early women’s writing. Free PDF download available on BDeBooks.