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
Literary responses Elizabeth Inchbald
EI received a letter from novelist Maria Edgeworth containing carefully-formulated praise of the nearly twenty-year-old A Simple Story (which Edgeworth had just read for the third or fourth time).
Manvell, Roger. Elizabeth Inchbald: England’s Principal Woman Dramatist and Independent Woman of Letters in 18th Century London. University Press of America, 1987.
159
Literary responses Lady Caroline Lamb
Reviewers were anything but indifferent. The New Monthly Magazine thought the title character ably and vigorously drawn and the book therefore a moral one: a fearful beacon to warn the young and inexperienced. But the...
Literary responses Anna Maria Hall
The sketches were popular with readers.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction. Stanford University Press, 1989.
A review in the Literary Gazette (yet more prone to read Irish stereotypes than Hall was to write them) called Sketches of Irish Characterthoroughly Irish, with all the...
Literary responses Sydney Owenson Lady Morgan
Two Belgian ministers of state wrote to express their appreciation.
Morgan, Sydney Owenson, Lady. Lady Morgan’s Memoirs. Editors Dixon, William Hepworth and Geraldine Jewsbury, AMS Press, 1975, 2 vols.
2: 391-2
Maria Edgeworth delighted even in the improbabilities of this book, and called its heroine wonderfully clever and preposterous—a Belgian Corinne.
qtd. in
Campbell, Mary, 1917 - 2002. Lady Morgan: The Life and Times of Sydney Owenson. Pandora, 1988.
222
The parallel...
Literary responses Anna Maria Hall
The second series was also well received. The Weekly Dispatch review of the same work reported that AMH did ample justice to the warmth of feeling, wit and humour of her countrymen, yet she does...
Literary responses Harriet Martineau
The Athenæum gave this almost a full-page review (far more than it had yet accorded any of the Illustrations). It compared HM 's work in detail with that of Sir Walter Scott and more...
Literary responses Amelia Opie
AO 's novels, which formed a comparatively minor part of her output, had an impact beyond the rest of her work. Literary historian Gary Kelly notes that when they were new they commanded among the...
Literary responses Emily Lawless
The Literary World vividly likened experiencing this novel to reading the life of a past century by lightning flashes, and the half-blinded reader reads on and on and cannot stop or look away short of...
Literary responses Jane Austen
Mary Russell Mitford found JA 's heroine pert and worldly.
qtd. in
Fergus, Jan. “The Professional Woman Writer”. The Cambridge Companion to Jane Austen, edited by Edward Copeland and Juliet McMaster, Cambridge University Press, 1997.
20
Jane, Lady Davy (wife of the eminent scientist), who confessed that with an exception for Maria Edgeworth she preferred old favourites to new...
Literary responses Harriet Martineau
Maria Edgeworth wrote to HM to express her admiration of The Hour and the Man, and Florence Nightingale said after the author's death that she had read it repeatedly and considered it the finest...
Literary responses Frances Jacson
The Critical Review did this novel proud, first listing it, then praising it warmly for its superior moral tendency.
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 1 (1812): 668
Critical Review. W. Simpkin and R. Marshall, 5 series.
4th ser. 6 (1814): 688
Sarah, Lady Davy , told Sarah Ponsonby
Literary responses Anna Maria Hall
Overall, the novel was given favourable reviews.
Keane, Maureen. Mrs. S.C. Hall: A Literary Biography. Colin Smythe, 1997.
10
The Athenæum thought it was AMH 's best novel
Athenæum. J. Lection.
929 (1845): 810
to date, commenting on its eloquent description.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
929 (1845): 810
The Gentleman's Magazine praised...
Literary responses Barbara Hofland
BH said she had the specific approbation of Maria and Richard Lovell Edgeworth for another book set in the lower ranks of society, The Blind Farmer and his Children.
Literary responses Frances Jacson
Maria Edgeworth read this novel on its appearance (firmly preferring it to Jane Austen's Emma), and two years later mentioned it as the title defining FJ 's achievement.
Percy, Joan. “An Unrecognized Novelist: Frances Jacson (1754-1842)”. British Library Journal, Vol.
23
, No. 1, 1997, pp. 81-97.
96n5
Published almost simultaneously with Austen
Literary responses Marguerite Gardiner Countess of Blessington
It was likened in the Athenæum's laudatory review to Maria Edgeworth 's anti-romantic novel Leonora, 1806, because of its similar scope and tendency and the artistic manner in which its subject was portrayed...

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