Excerpt from Elizabeth Inchbald and Her Circle: The Life Story of a Charming Woman (1753-1821) She was the youngest but one of the nine children - seven daughters and two sons - of John and Mary Simpson, her mother's maiden name bein Rushbrook. The Simpsons had only a small farm, but appear to have Been highly respected. They were Roman Catholics, like many of their neighbours, and on excellent terms with the surrounding Catholic gentry indeed, the Duchess of Norfolk herself took the trouble to write a long and tenderly expressed letter upon the death of one of Mrs Simpson's daughters-in-law. At no time does the farm appear to have been particularly prosperous, and Elizabeth was only eight years old when her father died. Mrs Simpson struggled on bravely. In spite of perpetual difficulties, it is quite evident that the old home at Standingfield was not by any means a dreary place. The family had a very large circle of visitors. Elizabeth's own diary, which she kept assiduously for fifty years, but most of which she herself destroyed, is known to have given the names of at least a hundred habitual callers, among them some of the principal families of the county. Possibly this may have been due to the fact that the Roman Catholic families naturally mixed with each other in a way that did much to break through slight differences of social status. Bury st'edmunds was, of course, the Simpsons' post-town, from which they had letters every day. Bury Fair and the little Bury Theatre - a tiny gafi lit, like larger ones then, with tallow candles - afforded a fairyland of delight to the childhood of the clever and already beautiful girl, who, from her very earliest years, seems to have nursed in herself a temperament of adventure. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.