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This article examines Mary Robinson's response to Marie Antoinette in three texts which exhibit a deviation from the otherwise consistent defense of the French Revolution that appears in her writings. Robinson knew and admired the French Queen, and it is both personal experience and memory that define her attitude to the events in France between the years 1791 and 1793, when her concern with other, more abstract political issues is subordinated to her sympathy for, and identification with, the Queen's story. In acknowledging this foregrounded (but, for the most part, forgotten) commentary, the author hopes to recuperate these works as sites of cultural significance as well as to represent their unique place within Robinson's political writing.

Elizabeth Inchbald was known in her own time as a radical, but she was also a cautious and pragmatic writer who succeeded in negotiating the oppressive political and cultural climate of the revolutionary decade. This essay examines Inchbald's play Every One Has His Fault (1793) as a text that intervenes on the side of a prorevolution agenda, dealing with issues such as patriarchal power and the William Godwin/Thomas Holcroft notion of "truth." Inchbald's success in navigating legal and censorial systems of power is evident in the fact that although this play escaped the notice of John Larpent, the Chief Examiner of Plays, it presents a forthright, progressive commentary on the political and social issues of the time.

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