The Modern Theatre is a ten-volume series of plays selected for publication in 1811 by actor, playwright, and novelist Elizabeth Inchbald (née Simpson). Published by Longman, Hurst, Reese, and Orme, the series was intended as a cross section of the most popular plays of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain. The 50 included plays (five in each volume) extended two earlier projects—The British Theatre (issued serially from 1806 to 1808 and then as a set), which printed 125 plays in 25 volumes with added prefaces by Inchbald, and A Collection of Farces and Other Afterpieces (1809), which included 61 plays in seven volumes. All three series—British Theatre, Collection, and Modern Theatre—offered a total of 236 plays in 42 volumes that often were advertised together into the middle years of the nineteenth century, both in Britain and abroad. Inchbald’s choice of writers included contemporaries such as Frederick Reynolds, Richard Cumberland, and the two George Colmans. Inchbald also included some of her own plays in the collections.