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A Simple Story (novel)A Simple Story is a novel by English author and actress, Elizabeth Inchbald. Published in early 1791 as an early example of a "novel of passion", it was very successful and became widely read in England and abroad. It went into a second edition in March 1791. It is still in print today.

Plot
The novel is divided into four volumes, two each devoted to its two storylines.

The first volumes books follow the love story of young Miss Milner (we are never told her first name) and her guardian Dorriforth, who begins the novel as a Roman Catholic priest. Miss Milner is a seventeen year old orphan, whose father's deathbed wish entrusted her to Dorriforth's guardianship despite disapproving of Catholicism. Miss Milner admires Dorriforth but struggles to obey his strict rules. She flirts with a Lord Lawnly whom Dorriforth must duel on her behalf, causing strife. Several deaths in Dorriforth's family cause him to inherit the title of Lord Elmwood, bringing with it a social obligation to marry and have children to carry on the Elmwood family name. Miss Milner falls in love with Dorriforth. The Pope releases Dorriforth from his vow of chastity, and he becomes engaged to the former heir's fiance�, Miss Fenton; their relationship is tepid but prudent on both sides. Dorriforth then realises that he has passionate feelings for Miss Milner, which he resists both due to his engagement and due to his doubts about Miss Milner's suitability as a wife. Through a series of machinations, however, assisted by Miss Woodley (a kindhearted spinster) and Sanford (a Jesuit mentor of Dorriforth's), Dorriforth's engagement to Miss Fenton is broken and he and Miss Milner are engaged.

The third volume then abruptly transitions to the deathbed of Lady Elmwood (the former Miss Milner), some seventeen or eighteen years later. We learn that Lord Elmwood had been at his estate in the West Indies for so long that Lady Elmwood assumed he was unfaithful, and had an affair of her own with Lord Lawnly. When Lord Elmwood returns, he banishes Lady Elmwood and refuses to acknowledge their only child, Matilda. A desperate letter that Lady Elmwood writes before dying convinces him to permit Matilda to live on one of his estates, on the condition that he never sees her.

Volumes three and four then narrate Matilda's young adulthood, as she "haunts" Lord Elmwood's house. She is tutored by Miss Woodley and Sanford, and is raised to idolize the father whom she never sees. She meets her cousin, Rushbrook, her father's nephew and heir, and they begin a secret friendship, based largely around reading. One day, Matilda accidentally meets her father on a staircase, and he banishes her. She languishes and falls ill. When a Lord Margrave learns she is no longer under her father's protection, he abducts her. He is about to rape her when Lord Elmwood (who has had a change of heart) rescues her. Rushbrook, who has fallen in love with her, is now able to secure Lord Elmwood's approval for their marriage. Lord Elmwood tells him that Matilda herself must decide. Rushbrook begs her for her hand, and the narrator says: "Whether the heart of Matilda, such as it has been described, could sentence him to misery, the reader is left to surmise�and if he supposes that it did not, he has every reason to suppose their wedded life was a life of happiness." This is the end of the narrative, and the narrator then provides a moral lesson for the novel.

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