KING LEAR; A Tragedy In Five Acts. As Performed at the Theatres Royal, Drury Lane and Covent Garden. Printed Under the Authority of the Managers From the Prompt Book. With Remarks by Mrs. Inchbald

London: Longman, Hurst et al. Paternoster Row, ca. 1780-1785. First with Mrs. Inchbald's "Remarks". With a frontispiece engraving. 12mo, the Play bound into later blue paper wrappers, lettered caligraphically in brown on the upper wrapper. 78 pp. A well preserved copy, the text-block browned as is usual with the printing. FIRST OF THE EDITION. Elizabeth Inchbald whose edition and commentary are offered here was an English novelist, actress and dramatist. She wrote two novels that have remained prominent to this day. She successfully translated and adapted several plays from German and French.
She appeared on the stage with her husband, Joseph Inchbald on September 4, 1772 in King Lear. Inchbald was successful as a playwright and between 1784 and 1805 she had London theatres perform 19 of her comedies, sentimental dramas and farces (many of them translated from the French). Her first play to be performed was A Mogul Tale, with her in the leading feminine role of Selina. In 1780, she joined the Covent Garden Company and played a breeches role in Philaster as Bellario. Other plays of hers produced included Appearance is Against Them (1785), Such Things Are (1787), and Everyone Has Fault (1793). Some of her other plays such as A Mogul Tale (1784) and I'll Tell You What (1785) were shown at the Haymarket Theatre. Eighteen of her plays were published. She wrote 21 or 23 more, but the exact number is disputed.
Inchbald's two novels have been frequently reprinted. She also did much editorial and critical work. Her literary start began with writing for The Artist and Edinburgh Review. A four-volume autobiography was destroyed before her death on the advice of her confessor, but she left some of her diaries. The latter are held at the Folger Shakespeare Library and an edition was recently published.
Her play Lovers' Vows (1798) was featured as a focus of moral controversy by Jane Austen in her novel Mansfield Park. Not only her plays, but her novel A Simple Story was praised. A present-day American critic, Terry Castle, called it "the most elegant English fiction of the eighteenth century".