Maria Edgeworth

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Standard Name: Edgeworth, Maria
Birth Name: Maria Edgeworth
Pseudonym: M. E.
Pseudonym: M. R. I. A.
ME wrote, during the late eighteenth century and especially the early nineteenth century, long and short fiction for adults and children, as well as works about the theory and practice of pedagogy. Her reputation as an Irish writer, and as the inventor of the regional novel, has never waned; it was long before she became outmoded as a children's writer; her interest as a feminist writer is finally being explored.
Watercolour portrait of youthful-looking Maria Edgeworth by John Downman, 1807. She sits on a straight-backed chair, wearing a lacy cap with a blue bow, and a blue, empire-style dress over white, high-necked, gauzy linen.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Education Charlotte Yonge
The young CY seems to have been totally unlike her adult self: a noisy, excitable child with a great capacity for screaming.
Battiscombe, Georgina, and E. M. Delafield. Charlotte Mary Yonge: The Story of an Uneventful Life. Constable and Company.
43
Her parents followed the system of Richard and Maria Edgeworth for bringing...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Charlotte Yonge
CM's preface (dated March 1870) says that as a child she preferred the inherited books of the former generation to any moderns except Maria Edgeworth .
Yonge, Charlotte, editor. A Storehouse of Stories. Macmillan.
1: v
She mentions two imitations (by Mary Martha Sherwood
Textual Production Virginia Woolf
By 1912 VW had published on Margaret Cavendish (as Duchess of Newcastle), Ann, Lady Fanshawe , Elizabeth Carter , Anna Seward , Elizabeth, Lady Holland , Maria Edgeworth , Lady Hester Stanhope , theBrontë
Theme or Topic Treated in Text Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
Here she expounds her method of teaching her grandchildren [or step-grandchildren] through play, and features acute critical comment on female writers for children. In particular, she makes detailed, intelligent criticism of Maria Edgeworth 's children's...
Intertextuality and Influence Elizabeth Pipe Wolferstan
A few statements are footnoted to their originators, whom EPW has either paraphrased or versified: Sherlock and Lavater are her favourites, but she also draws on lighter writers like Horace , Swift , and Coleridge
Friends, Associates Helen Maria Williams
On her return to Paris after Robespierre's death, HMW and Stone lived in a house (where she held her salon) on the Quai Malaquais. After peace was announced between England and France in 1801...
Textual Production Julia Wedgwood
When she began working on her second novel, her father insisted on editing her drafts extensively, priding himself that he could play a role in her career similar to that of Maria Edgeworth 's father
Publishing Susanna Watts
Maria Edgeworth wrote of SW on meeting her: This poor girl sold a novel in four volumes for ten guineas to Lane of the Minerva Press .
Watts, Susanna. Scrapbook.
Friends, Associates Susanna Watts
Maria Edgeworth (early in her career, but already known for Castle Rackrent as well as pedagogical works) met SW in a bookshop. The encounter must have been intensely embarrassing for Watts, who twice failed to...
Literary responses Susanna Watts
Mary Pilkington and others praised SW 's translations in manuscript. John Heyrick (husband of her friend Elizabeth) called her the elegant translator of Tasso in his First Flights, published in 1797.
Feminist Companion Archive.
Maria Edgeworth said...
Reception Susanna Watts
Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth , visiting Leicester in the year of publication, were begged by a local bookseller to look at this volume.
Aucott, Shirley. Susanna Watts (1768 to 1842): author of Leicester’s first guide, abolitionist and bluestocking. Shirley Aucott.
14 and n51
The Critical Review remembered SW for her specimen...
Publishing Sarah Tytler
ST found in J. A. Froude of Fraser's Magazine a very agreeable editor who gave his contributors a free hand, was sympathetic, could pay a cordial compliment, while such criticism as he offered was gentle...
Education Katharine Tynan
Owing to what KT calls an extraordinary wave of Puritanism throughout the Irish Catholic Church,
Tynan, Katharine. Twenty-Five Years: Reminiscences. Smith, Elder.
45
her reading was censored: her mother forbade her to read Mary Elizabeth Braddon 's Aurora Floyd (1863). She thought...
Intertextuality and Influence Katharine Tynan
The gruesome elements of the novel reach a peak when the protagonist believes a cancer has formed on her breast (a motif which KT may have taken from her early favourite Maria Edgeworth ) as...
Intertextuality and Influence Charlotte Maria Tucker
The earliest of CMT 's juvenile plays was a historical one, The Iron Mask, which she finished in 1839 and dedicated to her father with thanks for his help with the plot and characters....

Timeline

About 1766: Printer and engraver John Spilsbury perfected...

Building item

About 1766

Printer and engraver John Spilsbury perfected the dissected map which became the forerunner of the jigsaw puzzle.

1783-89: Thomas Day anonymously published The History...

Writing climate item

1783-89

Thomas Day anonymously published The History of Sandford and Merton, a didactic book for children in three volumes (the second published in 1786).

By early March 1792: According to Maria Edgeworth, 25,000 families...

National or international item

By early March 1792

According to Maria Edgeworth , 25,000 families in England had joined in the boycott against West Indian, that is slave-grown, sugar.

2 July 1798: The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or...

Writing climate item

2 July 1798

The conservative Lady's Monthly Museum: or polite repository of amusement and instruction published its first number. Sometimes called The Ladies' Monthly Museum . . . it ran until the 1830s.

10 May to 14 August 1813: The British Institution held a retrospective...

Building item

10 May to 14 August 1813

The British Institution held a retrospective exhibition of 141 paintings by Sir Joshua Reynolds at its Pall Mall Picture Galleries: a major event of the social season, both cultural and patriotic.
Barchas, Janine. What Jane Saw. http://www.whatjanesaw.org.

15 July 1819: Byron began to publish in instalments (opening...

Writing climate item

15 July 1819

Byron began to publish in instalments (opening with cantos one and two) his satiricalmock-epicpoemDon Juan; he left it unfinished at his death.

9 December 1826: The Literary Gazette printed a Key to Marianne...

Women writers item

9 December 1826

The Literary Gazette printed a Key to Marianne Spencer Hudson 's silver-fork novel, Almack's (titled after the well-known elite gentlemen's club of the same name), which had already reached its second edition this year. The...

1 January 1830: J. W. Croker for the first time used the...

Writing climate item

1 January 1830

J. W. Croker for the first time used the word Conservative to refer to the party which for a century and half had been called Tory.

1835: Ann Fraser-Tytler's children's novel Mary...

Women writers item

1835

Ann Fraser-Tytler 's children's novelMary and Florence; or, Grave and Gay was anonymously published at London.

9 August 1838: The Hampstead circulating library, intended...

Writing climate item

9 August 1838

The Hampstead circulating library, intended for the middling and lower ranks, which had stocked no novels on principle except those of Scott and Edgeworth , found these were borrowed so much more often than...

17 February 1847: The Whittington Club (named after the poor...

Building item

17 February 1847

The Whittington Club (named after the poor boy who became Lord Mayor of London) held its first meeting. Unlike traditional gentlemen's clubs, it welcomed women and lower-middle-class men.

Spring 1852: Samuel Orchart Beeton (later the husband...

Building item

Spring 1852

Samuel Orchart Beeton (later the husband of Isabella Mary Beeton) began publishing the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, which stimulated the spread of home dressmaking.

By Christmas 1869: Francis Galton, mathematician, scientist,...

Writing climate item

By Christmas 1869

Francis Galton , mathematician, scientist, and eugenicist, published Hereditary Genius: An Enquiry into its Laws and Consequences,

April 1879: James Murray—editor since 1 March of what...

Writing climate item

April 1879

James Murray —editor since 1 March of what was to become the Oxford English Dictionary—issued an Appeal for readers to supply illustrative quotations.

Texts

Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, and Maria Edgeworth. A Letter to the Right Hon. the Earl of Charlemont. P. Byrne, 1797.
Edgeworth, Maria. Belinda. J. Johnson, 1801.
Edgeworth, Maria. Belinda. Editor Ní Chuilleanáin, Eiléan, J. M. Dent and Sons, 1993.
Edgeworth, Maria. Belinda. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Edgeworth, Maria. Castle Rackrent. J. Johnson, 1800.
Edgeworth, Maria. Comic Dramas. R. Hunter, 1817.
Edgeworth, Maria. Continuation of Early Lessons. J. Johnson, 1814.
Leadbeater, Mary, and Maria Edgeworth. Cottage Dialogues among the Irish Peasantry. J. Johnson, 1813.
Edgeworth, Maria. Early Lessons. Joseph Johnson, 1801.
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, and Maria Edgeworth. Essay on Irish Bulls. Joseph Johnson, 1802.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Harrington, A Tale; and, Ormond, A Tale. R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock, and Joy, 1817.
Edgeworth, Maria. Helen. R. Bentley, 1834.
Watson, George, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Castle Rackrent, Oxford University Press, 1964, p. vii - xxv.
Figes, Eva, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Belinda, Pandora, 1986, p. vii - xi.
Figes, Eva, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Patronage, Pandora, 1986, p. ix - xi.
Gee, Maggie, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Helen, Pandora Press, 1987, p. vii - xii.
McCormack, William John et al. “Introduction”. The Absentee, The World’s Classics, Oxford University Press, 1988, p. ix - xlvii.
Myers, Mitzi, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. The Little Dog Trusty; The Orange Man; and, The Cherry Orchard, Augustan Reprints, Augustan Reprint Society, 1990, p. iii - xiii.
Butler, Marilyn, and Maria Edgeworth. “Introduction”. Castle Rackrent; and, Ennui, Penguin, 1992, pp. 1-54.
Edgeworth, Maria. Leonora. Joseph Johnson, 1806.
Edgeworth, Maria. Letters for Literary Ladies. J. Johnson, 1795.
Edgeworth, Maria et al. Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld. Editor Scott, Walter Sidney, Golden Cockerel Press, 1953.
Edgeworth, Maria. Little Plays for Children. R. Hunter, 1827.
Edgeworth, Richard Lovell, and Maria Edgeworth. Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq. R. Hunter, 1820.
Edgeworth, Maria, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth. Moral Tales for Young People. J. Johnson, 1801.