The Voysey Inheritance is a play in five acts by the English dramatist Harley Granville-Barker.[1] Written in 1903–1905, it was originally staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 1905 featuring Mabel Hackney,[2] and revived at the same venue in 1965, the Royal Exchange, Manchester in 1989 and at the National Theatre in 1989, and in 2006.[3][4] In 2006, American playwright David Mamet wrote what a critic for The New York Times called a "canny new adaptation" of the play for New York's Atlantic Theatre Company.[5]
Described by Samuel French as "a witty, impeccably crafted portrait of a family in the midst of a surprisingly modern moral dilemma",[6] its subject is financial fraud, on which Ian Clarke wrote, "in The Voysey Inheritance, the dishonesty implicates not only the individual Voyseys but the institutions, ideology, and economic base of Edwardian England".[7]