The actress, playwright, novelist, and theatrical critic Elizabeth Inchbald (1753-1821) destroyed her memoirs on the advice of a priest, but the pocket diaries she left behind provide significant traces of an embodied self in relation to its practices as a consumer and as a professional subject in the world.

Inchbald’s busy list of teas, play rehearsals, writing, walking, hairdressing, carriage rides, and visits convey a rich and hectic life, often full of anxiety and low spirits. In this lecture, Professor Laura Engel considers excerpts from Inchbald’s pocket diaries from 1781-1820 in order to theorize the significance of the pocket diary as an embodied archive.

The pocket diary can be seen as a prop left over from the scenes of Inchbald’s daily performances, and it can also be understood as an ongoing chronicle of the processes of her embodied actions. The diaries also contain a wealth of material about the workings of the theater in the 1780s, including details about the repertoire system, learning of roles or “copying parts,” competitiveness amongst actresses, and the experience of going to the theater whilst writing for the theater.