Elizabeth Inchbald: A Life in Lodgings Available to Purchase

Elizabeth Inchbald was successful as an author and yet, in adult life, never lived other than as a lodger in other people's houses. By examining her lodging life in detail, I propose some explanation for this apparent rejection of property ownership and domesticity: a rational preference for the pecuniary independence offered by investments in liquid assets, and the flexibility and human interest this writer of comedy found in lodgings. I also reassess the concept of “precarity,” through new research into Inchbald's landlords and landladies. Their economic lives are revealed to be as unstable as those of many a lodger.