Recommendations
Books Like A Simple Story
Best books to read after A Simple Story by Elizabeth Inchbald
Readers who love A Simple Story — Inchbald's formally unusual two-part novel of the passionate relationship between Miss Milner and her authoritarian guardian-figure Dorriforth, and then the suffering of their daughter Matilda a generation later — will enjoy these works of women's fiction, the literature of sensibility and authority, and the great eighteenth-century novel tradition.
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Mansfield Park
by Jane Austen
The Austen novel most deeply influenced by A Simple Story — the passive, suffering heroine (Fanny Price), the powerful, authoritarian guardian figure (Sir Thomas Bertram), and the complex of authority and sensibility are all traceable to Inchbald; the most direct successor in the tradition.
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Cecilia
by Fanny Burney
The companion novel in the eighteenth-century women's tradition — Burney's heiress under inadequate guardians is the social-comedy version of Inchbald's more psychologically intense father-guardian figure; both novels are about the intelligent woman in relation to male authority.
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Clarissa
by Samuel Richardson
The foundational novel of the woman imprisoned by her family's authority — Clarissa's persecution by her father and brothers for refusing the man they have chosen is the psychological ancestor of Miss Milner's situation; both heroines are destroyed by the conflict between self-will and the authority that surrounds them.
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The Female Quixote
by Charlotte Lennox
The companion novel in the tradition of the woman misled by her reading and her desires — Arabella's romance delusions create a comic version of the situation Inchbald treats with psychological seriousness in A Simple Story; the two novels together show the range of the tradition.
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Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
The Austen novel that most directly continues Inchbald's treatment of passion vs. prudence — Marianne's sensibility and its near-catastrophic consequences are the Austenian transformation of Miss Milner's passionate willfulness; both novels are about the cost of unregulated feeling.
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Daniel Deronda
by George Eliot
Eliot's final novel is the Victorian heir to A Simple Story's themes of female passion, authority, and moral consequence — Gwendolen Harleth's fatal marriage and its consequences recall Miss Milner's passionate will; both novels are about the woman who refuses to be constrained and the price she pays.
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The Age of Innocence
by Edith Wharton
The American novel that most powerfully continues the tradition of social constraint and suppressed passion — Newland Archer's and Ellen Olenska's suppressed love in the face of social authority is the American equivalent of Miss Milner's and Dorriforth's constrained relationship.
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A Simple Story (Broadview Press)
by Elizabeth Inchbald (ed. Anna Lott)
The alternative scholarly edition for readers who want the full critical apparatus — Lott's edition includes contextual documents on the theatre world, the Catholic context, and the reception history that the Oxford edition lacks.
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