Elizabeth Inchbald is chiefly remembered today as the author of Lovers’ Vows, the play at the heart of Jane Austen’s Mansfield Park, but she was also in her day a successful actor, novelist and playwright. Later in life she turned to editing the works of others, rather than producing her own, and published this collection of British dramatic works, containing plays by Shakespeare, Congreve, Beaumont and Fletcher, Sheridan, Goldsmith and others. Other collections by her included The Modern Theatre (1811) and A Collection of Farces (1815).