Feminist Sensibilities: The Feud of Elizabeth Inchbald and Mary Wollstonecraft.

This article examines the acrimonious relationship between Elizabeth Inchbald and Mary Wollstonecraft through the lens of their differing approaches to feminism and sensibility. In her novels and plays, Inchbald relied on sentimental female characters to direct sympathy toward women, while Wollstonecraft was outspoken about the need for more progressive reform. Wollstonecraft objected to Inchbald's sentimental strategy in her reviews of Inchbald's novels, A Simple Story (1791) and Nature and Art (1796), for the Analytical Review. Although Wollstonecraft's premature death in 1797 ended any further debate between the two women, this essay argues that Inchbald's play Lovers' Vows (1798), an adaptation of August von Kotzebue's Das Kind der Liebe (1780), was informed by her relationship with Wollstonecraft, and can be read as a response to Wollstonecraft's criticism of her novels and a model of her own feminist literary strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]