Remembering Elizabeth Inchbald’s<i>The Massacre</i>: Romantic cosmopolitanism, sectarian history, and religious difference

Tomko, Michael

doi:10.1080/10509580701844926

Cited by 2 publications

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“…24 More recently, Tomko has argued that a detailed understanding of Inchbald's own religious history and her relationship with the Catholic Rookwood Gage family can shed light on her literary development. 25 Tomko's contention that Inchbald's religious background is an important and neglected key to unlocking England's first Catholic novel is the starting point for this article. Tomko has gone further than anyone else in his investigation of Inchbald's background and the aristocratic dynasty in whose shadow she lived, but his research has relied on printed sources.…”

Section: Elizabeth Inchbald's 'Catholic Novel' and Its Local Backgroumentioning

confidence: 99%

Elizabeth Inchbald's Catholic Novel’ and Its Local Background

Young¹

2013

Recusant History

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Elizabeth Inchbald's A Simple Story (1791) was the first novel written by an English Catholic with Catholic characters. It was set in the world of the Catholic gentry, a world that Inchbald knew well from her upbringing in Suffolk on a farm adjacent to the estate of an ancient Catholic family. Inchbald herself acknowledged that one of the book's characters, the ex-Jesuit Sandford, was based on an individual from her childhood, and some effort has been made by Inchbald scholars (notably Patricia Sigl and Michael Tomko) to research her Catholic background and the Gage and Rookwood families whose history may have inspired aspects of the novel. However, the Gage family's papers have not been considered for the light they can throw on Inchbald and the eighteenth-century Catholic community in Suffolk. These sources contain references to the Simpson family and have the potential to enliven our understanding of the immediate environment of Inchbald's youth. This article corrects misconceptions transmitted by James Boaden and other biographers of Inchbald, proposes a new identity for the man who became the model for Sandford, and draws attention to possible correspondences between the circumstances and relationships of the Gage family and the characters in A Simple Story.

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Section: Elizabeth Inchbald's 'Catholic Novel' and Its Local Backgroumentioning

confidence: 99%