British Romanticism and the Catholic Question

Tomko, Michael

doi:10.1057/9780230300453

Cited by 34 publications

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“…John Gage S.J., who, according to Edgeworth, provided the model for the Jesuit priest Sandford in A Simple Story'. 59 This statement derives from a letter of Maria Edgeworth to Mrs Ruxton of 2 March 1810 in which Edgeworth reported that she had asked Inchbald if any of the characters in A Simple Story 'were taken from life': Inchbald replied that 'they are all invention except that she once knew a man who would she thinks have acted just like Sandford had similar occurrences fallen in his way -He was a jesuit and her first confessor'. Patricia Sigl noted that John Gage served the Catholic mission in Bury when Inchbald was young and compared the description of him by Sir Thomas Gage, 7th Baronet with Inchbald's characterization of Sandford: 'He was rough in his manners and appearance but had an excellent and feeling heart'.…”

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%