1767-1849; b. 1 Jan., Black Bourton, nr. Reading, Oxfordshire; dg. Richard
Lovell Edgeworth and his first wife Anna Elers; moved to her father’s
estate at Edgeworthstown (formerly and later Mostrim and associated with
the family since 1583), Co. Longford with him and his current wife Elizabeth
[née Sneyd], in June 1782 (aetat. 15); later to become his chief
supporting in managing the estate, as well as teaching the children of
his later marriages; Letters for Literary Ladies (1795); The
Parents Assistant] (1796) - later reprinted in Drogheda (1802) - and
Practical Education (1798), reflect the liberal educational theories
of her father and his circle, which included Thomas Day and Erasmus Darwin,
and ultimately based on those of Rousseau in ‘Emile’; believed
in cultivating children’s memories by ‘well-arranged associations’
rather than rote; during the Rebellion of 1798, the Edgeworth’s were
spared on account of their good reputation as landlords, and came under
suspicion of the Orangemen and were made ‘hostages at the inn’
in Longford in consequence; father and daughter visit the publisher Johnson
in prison, where he served a six months sentence, summer 1799; Maria’s
novella Castle Rackrent, published by Johnson in January 1800,
appearing first anonymously and probably intended as a contribution to
the debate about the Union, but greeted enthusiastically as the first
regional novel; Belinda (1801); Moral Tales (1801); wrote,
with R. L. Edgeworth, an Essay on Irish Bulls (1802) - that which
does not, and never did exist’, claiming the English of Ireland as
superior to that of England as still being ‘the language of Shakespeare’;
stayed in Brussels and Paris, 1802-03; refused proposal of marriage from
Count [var. Chevalier] Abram Niclas Clewberg Edelcrantz, whom she met
in the Netherlands, Dec. 1802; The Modern Griselda (1804); Leonora
(1806), ded. Edelcrantz; Maria spent part of 1813 in London and was lionised;
Tales of Fashionable Life, 2 series [6 vols.], the first series
containing Ennui, The Dun, Manoeuvering, and Almeria
(1st ser. 1809); the second containing Vivian, The Absentee,
Mme de Fleury, Emile de Coulanges (2nd ser. 1812); read Scott’s
admiring ‘Postscript’ to Waverley (Chap. LXXII), praising
her, 23 Oct., 1814; issued Ormond (1817), during her father’s
last illness; death of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 1817; Memoirs of R.
L. Edgeworth (1820); visited Scott at Abbotsford, 1823; Scott visits
Edgeworthstown, 1825; Tales and Novels, in 14 vols. issued by [Hunter,]
Baldwin & Cradock (London 1832); Helen (1834); in later years
took over management of Edgeworthstown from her brother Lovell Edgeworth,
whom she pensioned off and sent to England; Orlandino (1848), written
for the Poor Relief Fund; in her last years, she helped to alleviate suffering
in the Famine; signed petition for a Govt. pension, among others, eliciting
a Civil List Pension of £200 for William Carleton in 1848; some fragmentary
notes associated with composition of The Absentee are held in the
Bodleian Library (MS Eng. e.1463); other papers are held in the National
Library of Ireland; the papers of Maria Edgeworth are available on microfilm
(Adam Matthew, 1995); there is a photo [Daguerrotype] of 25 May, 1841.
CAB DNB JMC NCBE MKA ODQ RAF OCEL DIB DIW DIH DIL FDA OCIL
Original Works, Letters for Literary Ladies (London: J. Johnston 1795); The Parent’s Assistant, or Stories for Children, 2 vols. (London: J. Johnston 1796); Do., 6 vols. [enlarged edn.] (London: J. Johnston 1800), another edn. of 1,000 (Drogheda 1802), for ‘use in the County Schools of Ireland’; Practical Education, or the History of Harry and Lucy, 2 vols. (London: J. Johnston 1798; rep. 1815); Do., 2nd edn. in 3 vols. (London: for J. Johnston by J. Crowder 1801), 3 pls. (fold), 8o.; A Rational Primer (London: J. Johnston 1799); Castle Rackrent (Dublin: P. Wogan; London: J. Johnston 1800); Early Lessons (London: J. Johnston 1801); Belinda, 3 vols. (London: J. Johnston 1801; rep. 1810); Moral Tales for Young People, 5 vols. (London: J. Johnston 1801); with R. L. Edgeworth, Essay on Irish Bulls (London: J. Johnston 1802; 2nd edn. 1803); Popular Tales (London: J. Johnston 1805); Leonora, 2 vols. (London: J. Johnston 1814); [appearing sole as R. L. Edgeworth,] Essays on Professional Education (London: J. Johnston 1809); Tales of Fashionable Life, 3 vols. (London: J. Johnston 1809-12) [infra]; Continuation of Early Lessons, 2 vols. London: J. Johnston 1814); Patronage, 4 vols. London: J. Johnston 1814); with R. L. Edgeworth, Readings on Poetry (London: R. Hunter 1816); Harrington, A Tale; and Ormond, a Tale, 3 vols. (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1817); Comic Dramas in 3 Acts (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1817) [Sadleir 764] [contains “Love and Law”; “The Two Guardians”, “The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock”]; ed., Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq., 2 vols. (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1820); Rosamund, 2 vols. (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1821); Frank, 3 vols. (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1822); Harry and Lucy, 4 vols. (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1825); Tales and Miscellaneous Pieces, 14 vols. (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1825); Little Plays for Children (London: R. Hunter, Baldwin, Cradock & Joy 1827); Garry Owen, or The Snow-Woman; and Poor Bob, The Chimney Sweeper (London: Murray 1832); Tales and Novels, 18 vols. (London: Baldwin [et. al.] 1832-33); Helen, 3 vols. (London: R. Bentley 1834); Orlandino (Edinburgh: W. & R. Chambers 1848), The Novels of Maria Edgeworth, 12 vols. (London: J. M. Dent; NY: Dodd, Mead 1893); also Mary Leadbeater, Cottage Dialogues Among the Irish Peasantry, notes and pref. by Maria Edgeworth (1811). Also, Leonora: with Letters on Several Subjects [Tales and novels of Maria Edgeworth, Vol. 13] (London: Baldwin & Cradock 1833), 352pp. [&c.]
Tales of Fashionable Life, with a preface by R. L. Edgeworth, 6 vols. [2nd Edn.] (London: J. Johnston & Co. 1809-1812), Vol. 1: Ennui; Vol. 2: Almeria / Madame de Fleury / The Dun; Vol. 3: Manoeuvring; Vol. 4: Vivian; Vol. 5: Emilie de Coulanges / The Absentee [Pt. 1]; Vol. VI: The Absentee [Pt. II]. Do. [4th Edn.; of which Vols. 4-6 are the 3rd Edn.] (London: Johnston 1813), and another edn. (1815). Also Do. [Microfilm] (British Library [1998]).
Correspondence, Frances Edgeworth, A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, with a Selection from her Letters, 3 vols. (London [priv.] 1867). Augustus J.C. Hare, The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, 2 Vols. (London: Edward Arnold 1894); Samuel Henry Romilly, intro. & annot., Romilly-Edgeworth letters, 1813-1818 (London: John Murray [1936]), xv, 194pp.; Walter Sidney Scott, ed., Letters of Maria Edgeworth and Anna Letitia Barbauld selected from the Lushington papers, ill. by Lettice Sandford (London: Golden Cockerel Press 1953), 86pp.; Christina [Edgeworth] Colvin, Maria Edgeworth: letters from England, 1813-1844 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1971), 649pp., port.; Christina Colvin, ed., Maria Edgeworth in France and Switzerland: Selections from the Edgeworth Family Letters (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979), xxxii, 309pp., pls. & ports.; Christina Colvin, ed., Maria Edgeworth in France and Switzerland: Selections from the Edgeworth family letters (1979).
Sundry Editions, Popular Tales (London: Routledge [1875]); Selection from Her Works, intro. Sir Malcolm Cotton Seton, KCB (Dublin: Talbot Press [n.d.]). Ormond (Shannon: IUP 1972), and Do., ed. W. J. McCormack (Gloucester: Alan Sutton 1990); Ormond [Gill’s Irish Classics] (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1990), 360pp.; Ennui (NY: Garland Publ. 1978); Essay on Irish Bulls [1802] (NY: Garland Publ. 1979); The Absentee, ed. W. J. McCormack and Kim Walker [World Classics] (OUP 1987); Belinda, intro. Eva Figes, (London: Pandora 1986); [?] Figes, ed., Patronage (London: Pandora 1986); Marilyn Butler, ed., Castle Rackrent [1800] and Ennui [1809] (Harmondsworth Penguin 1992), 361pp.; Eileán Ní Chuilleanáin, ed., Belinda [1801] (London: J. M. Dent: Everyman 1993), 474pp.; John Banville, Ormond [Irish Classic Novels] (Belfast: Appletree 1993), 244pp.; Claire Connolly, ed., Letters for Literary Ladies; To Which is Added, An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-justification [1795] (London: Dent/Everyman Library 1993), xxvi, 95pp.; Do. [other edns.] (1799; 1805; 1814); another edn. (George Town [DC]: Joseph Milligan 1810) [facs. in Early American imprints; 2nd ser., no. 20028, 1990)
Modern Collected Edition: The Works of Maria Edgeworth (London: Pickering & Chatto 1997) [incl. all major fiction and some juvenile fiction with sel. of education and occas. writings.] Anthologies & Selections, “Murad the Unlucky”, in Robert E. Mack, ed., Oriental Tales (Oxford: OUP 1992), pp.215-56. Correspondence, F. V. Barry, Chosen Letters by Maria Edgeworth (London: Jonathan Cape 1931), 480pp., and Do. [rep. edn.] (NY: AMS 1979).
Papers on microfilm: The Papers of Maria Edgeworth, 1768-1849 [on microfilm], Part I: The Edgeworth Papers from the Bodleian Library, Oxford, 23 reels 35mm. silver halide pos.; Pt. 2: The Edgeworth Papers from the National Library of Ireland, c20 reels [do.]; Pt. 3: Edgeworth Papers from Other Libraries, c10 reels [do.] (resp. £1640, £1400, and £700), with Guides. [Oxford St., Marlborough, Wiltshire, England, SN8 1AP.] Also, The Journals of Michael Pakenham Edgeworth (1812-1881) from the Bodleian Library [India in the Age of Empire], Guide, 40pp.
Miscellaneous, G. R. Neilson, The Book of Bulls. Being a Very complete and Entertaining Essay on the Evolution of the Irish and other "Bulls". With which is Included "Essay on Irish Bulls", by the Edgeworths, published Early in the Century (London: Simkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd., and George Tucker 1898).
Castle Rackrent (1810), Later & Modern Editions, Castle Rackrent [5th edn.] (Dublin: T. Henshall 1810), 12o. [Dix collection; Marsh’s Library]; Castle Rackrent, ed. Anne Thackeray Richie (1895); Brander Matthews, ed. Castle Rackrent (London: Dent 1910); A. Norman Jeffares, ed., Castle Rackrent (Edinburgh 1953); Caoimhín Ó Marcaigh, ed., Castle Rackrent (Dublin: Educational Company of Ireland 1970); Robert Lee Wolff, ed., Castle Rackrent [facs. rep.] (NY: Garland Press 1978); George Watson, ed., Castle Rackrent: An Hibernian Tale, taken from facts, and from the Manners of the Irish Squires, before the Year 1782 [World Classics; Oxford Paperbacks (OUP 1964, 1980; further reps. incl. 1989 & 1995), 160pp.
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‘The Dramatic Writers of Ireland’ [No. X], in Dublin University Magazine, LXVII (1856), pp.15-[2]3.
Mrs Frances A. Edgeworth, A Memoir of M. Edgeworth with Selections from her Letters, 3 vols. (London: priv. 1867).
Helen Zimmern, Maria Edgeworth [Eminent Women Series, ed. John H. Ingram] (London: W. H. Allen 1883), 219pp.
Augustus J. C. Hare, ed. The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, 2 vols. (London: Edward Arnold 1894).
C. J. Hamilton, Notable Irishwomen (1904) [includes life of Maria Edgeworth].
Emily Lawless, Maria Edgeworth (London: Macmillan 1904).
Constance Hill, Maria Edgeworth and her Circle in the Days of Bonaparte and Bourbon (London: John Lane 1910).
A. H. Patterson, The Edgeworths (Univ. Tutorial Press 1914).
Virginia Woolf, ‘Lives of the Obscure: Taylors and Edgeworths’, The Common Reader [1925] (London: Hogarth Press 1929), pp.146-59.
Harriet Jessie Butler & Harold Edgeworth Butler, eds., The Black Book of Edgeworthstown and Other Edgeworth Memoirs 1595-1817 (London: Faber & Gwyer 1927).
B[ertha] C[oolidge] Slade, Maria Edgeworth 1767-1849: A Bibliography Tribute (London [priv.] 1937).
Isabel C. Clarke, Maria Edgeworth, Her Family and Friends (London: Hutchinson 1949).
P. H. Newby, Maria Edgeworth (London: A Barker 1950).
R. F. Butler, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Sir Walter Scott: Unpublished Letters, 1823’ in Review of English Studies [n.s. 9] (1958).
H. W. Haussermann, The Genevese Background (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul 1952).
Elizabeth Inglis-Jones, The Great Maria (London: Faber 1959).
Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists 1800-1850 (NY: Columbia UP 1959), pp.54-106 [Chap. 2].
Donald Davie, The Heyday of Sir Walter Scott (London: Routledge 1961), Chap 6..
Christina Edgeworth Colvin, ‘Maria’s Father’, in Times Lit. Supplement, 6 Jan 1966, pp.9-10.
Flanagan, ‘The Big Hosue of Ross Drishane’, in The Kenyon Review (Jan. 1966), pp.54-78.
James Newcomer, ‘Castle Rackrent: Its Structure and Its Irony’, Criticism 8, No. 2 (Spring 1966), pp.170-79.
Newcomer, Maria Edgeworth, The Novelist (1767-1849), A Bicentennial Study (Texas Christian UP 1967).
Mark Hawthorne, Doubt and Dogma in Maria Edgeworth (Gainsville: Florida UP 1967).
Christina Edgeworth Colvin, Two Unpublished MSS by Maria Edgeworth, A Review of English Literature, ed. A. N. Jeffares, Vol. VIII Oct. 1967), p.53ff.
Michael Hurst, Maria Edgeworth and the Public Scene: Intellect, Fine Feeling and Landlordism in the Age of Reform (London: Macmillan 1969).
Patrick Murray, ‘The Irish Novels of Maria Edgeworth,’ in Studies, LIX, No. 235 (Autumn 1970), pp.267-78. James Newcomer, ‘A Tour in Connemara', Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.95-103 [infra].
Patrick Murray, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Her Father: The Literary Partnership’, in Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (1971), pp.39-50.
Marilyn Butler, Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography (OUP 1972).
Duane Edwards, ‘The Narrator of Castle Rackrent’, in South Atlantic Quarterly, 71, No. 1 (Winter 1972), pp.124-29.
Newcomer, Maria Edgeworth [Irish Writers Series] (Lewisburg: Bucknell 1973) [reprint?].
Edgar E. MacDonald, ed. The Education of the Heart, the Correspondence of Rachel Mordecai Lazarus and Maria Edgeworth (North Carolina UP 1977).
Anthony Cronin, ‘Maria Edgeworth: The Unlikely Precursor’, in Heritage Now: Irish Literature in the English Language (Dingle: Brandon 1982), pp.17-30.
John Cronin, ‘Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent’ [Chap. 1], in The Anglo-Irish Novel: The Nineteenth Century: Vol. I (Belfast: Appletree 1980), pp.19-40.
‘The Irish writer and His Public in the Nineteenth Century’, Hunter and Rawson, eds., Yearbook of English Studies, 2 (1981), pp. 102-116, espec. p.106ff..
Alan Warner, ‘Maria Edgeworth’, A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature (Dublin: Gill & Macmillan 1981), pp.41-49.
[Anthony] Mark Mortimer, ‘Castle Rackrent and its historical Contexts’, in Études irlandaises, 9 (Dec. 1984), pp.107-23.
Tom Dunne, Maria Edgeworth and the Colonial Mind [O’Donnell Lecture, UCC] (Cork UP 1984), 23pp..
O[leta] Elizabeth McWhirter Harden, Maria Edgeworth’s Art of Prose Fiction (The Hague: Mouton 1971).
Harden, Maria Edgeworth (NY: Twayne 1984).
W. J. McCormack, Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish Literary History form 1789 to 1939 (Oxford 1985).
Robert Tracy, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan: Legality versus Legitimacy’, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 40, No. 1 (June 1985), pp.1-22.
Eileán Ní Chuílleanáin, ‘Woman as Writer: Dánta Grá to Maria Edgeworth’, in Irish Women, Image and Achievement (Dublin: Arlen House 1985), pp.111-26.
Cóilín Owens, ‘Irish Bulls and Castle Rackrent’, in Owens, ed., Family Chronicles: Maria Edgeworth’s Castle Rackrent (Dublin: Wolfhound Press.
NJ: Barnes & Noble 1987), pp.70-78 [other contribs. incl. Newcomer, Harden, etc.].
Hubert Butler, ‘Maria Edgeworth’ [1954], in Roy Foster, ed., The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press.
Dublin: Lilliput 1990), pp.137-45.
W. J. McCormack, ‘French Revolution … Anglo-Irish Literature … Beginnings?: The Case of Maria Edgeworth,’ in H. Gough and David Dickson, eds., Ireland and the French Revolution (1990) [cp. 229-30].
Tom Dunne, ‘“A Gentleman’s Estate should be a Moral School”: Edgeworthstown in Faction and Fiction, 1760-1940’, in Raymond Gillespie and Gerard Moran, eds., Longford: Essays in County History (Dublin 1991), cp.118.
Suvendrini Perera, Reaches of Empire: The English Novel from Edgeworth to Dickens (Columbia UP 1991).
Bernard Le Gros, ‘Maria Edgeworth, Castle Rackrent’, in Jacqueline Genet, ed., The Big House in Ireland (Dingle: Brandon; NY: Barnes & Noble 1991).
Philip J. M. Sturgess, ‘Conclusion: A Reading of Maria Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent’, in Narrativity: Theory and Practice (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992), 287-311.
Catherine Gallagher, Nobody’s Story: Vanishing Acts of Women Writers in the Marketplace 1670-1820 (California UP 1995) [incls. Maria Edgeworth].
Julian Moynahan, ‘Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849): Origination and a Checklist’, in Anglo-Irish: The Literary Imagination in a Hyphenated Culture (Princeton UP 1995) [Chap. II], pp.12-42.
Claire Connolly, ‘Gender, Nation and Ireland: The Early Novels of Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan’ (PhD. Univ. of Wales 1995).
Kathryn Kirkpatrick, ‘Putting down the Rebellion: Notes and Gloesses on Castle Rackrent’, in Eire-Ireland, 30, 1 (1995), pp.77-90 [remarks on competing discourses in the text and glossary].
Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, ‘’The Voices of Maria Edgeworth’s Comedy’, Theresa O’Connor, ed., The Comic Tradition in Irish Women Writers (Florida UP 1996), pp.21-39.
Ina Ferris, ‘Narrating Cultural Encounter: Lady Morgan and the Irish National Tale’, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 51, No. 3 (Dec. 1996), pp.287-303.
W. A. Maguire, ‘Castle Nugent and Castle Rackrent: faction and fiction in Maria Edgeworth’, in Eighteenth-Century Ireland, Vol 11 (1996), pp.146-59 [locates Rackrent at the residence of Hugh Maguire in Tempo].
Andrew McCann, ‘Conjugal Love and the Enlightenment Subject: The Colonial Context of Non-Identity in Maria Edgeworth’s Belinda’, Babel 3, 4, 5 (1996) pp.56-77.
Brian Hollingworth, Maria Edgeworth’s Irish Writing: Language, History, Politics (London: Macmillan 1997), 244pp..
Colin Graham, ‘History, Gender and the Colonial Moment: Castle Rackrent’, in Margaret Kelleher and James H. Murphy, eds., Gender Perspectives in Nineteenth-Century Ireland: Public and Private Spheres (Dublin: Irish Academic Press 1997), pp.93-103.
Margaret Kelleher, ‘“Philosophick Views” Maria Edgeworth and the Great Famine’, in Eire-Ireland 32, 1 (Spring 1997), pp.41-62.
Willa Murphy, ‘Maria Edgeworth and the Aesthetics of Secrecy’, in Tadhg Foley & Seán Ryder, Ideology and Ireland in the Nineteenth Century (Dublin: Four Courts Press 1998), p.45-54.
Audrey Bilger, Laughing Feminism: Subversive Comedy in Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen [Humor in Life & Letters] (Wayne State UP 1999) [q.pp.]
Willa Murphy, ‘A Queen of Hearts or an Old Maid?: Maria Edgeworth's Fictions of Union’, in Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), pp.187-201
Declan Kiberd, ‘Native Informants: Maria Edgeworth and Castle Rackrent’, in Irish Classics (London: Granta 2000), pp.243-64.
Susanne Hagemann, ‘Tales of a Nation: Territorial Pragmatism in Elizabeth Grant, Maria Edgeworth, and Sydney Owenson’, in Irish University Review (Autumn/Winter 2003), pp.263-78
Sharon Murphy, Maria Edgeworth and Romance (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2004), 208pp.
Sir Walter Scott called Edgeworth ‘the great Maria’ ‘A Postscript which should have been a Preface’, Waverley, 1814, p.lxxii.
William Carleton, General Introduction, Traits and Stories (1843 Edn.; p.iv.
W. B. Yeats, [Castle Rackrent is] ‘one of the most inspired chronicles written in English.’ (Representative Irish Tales, facs. edn., NJ: Atlanta Highlands 1979, pp.27-28, 34.).
Emily Lawless, Maria Edgeworth, 1904, p.200.
Maurice Egan, ‘The Irish Novel’, in Catholic University Bulletin, Vol. 10, No. 3 (1904), p.334.
Edith Somerville, Strayaways, 1919, p.252.
Daniel Corkery, Synge and Anglo-Irish Literature, 1931; Mercer Press Edn. 1966, p.8.
Stephen Gwynn, Irish Literature and Drama, London 1936, p.55.
Robert Lee Wolff, Introduction to R. L. and M. Edgeworth, Essay on Irish Bulls, London: Garland Publ. 1979, pp.xx.
Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists 1800-1850, Columbia UP 1959, pp.23, .77.
Vivian Mercier, The Irish Comic Tradition, 1962, p.196.
Alan Warner, A Guide to Anglo-Irish Literature, Gill & Macmillan 1981, pp.44, 45, 46, 47.
James Newcomer, Maria Edgeworth, The Novelist, 1967, p.132.
John Cronin, (The Anglo-Irish Novel, Vol. 1 1980).
W. J. McCormack, Tradition and the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy in Anglo-Irish History 1789-39, OUP 1985).
Sandra Gilbert and Susan Gubar, The Mad Woman in the Attic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-century Literary Imagination, New Haven: Yale UP 1997, pp.150-51.
J. C. Beckett, ‘The Irish Writer and his Public in the Nineteenth Century’, in Yearbook of English Studies, 11, 1981, p.106.
Hubert Butler, ‘Maria Edgeworth’ [1954], in Roy Foster, ed., The Sub-Prefect Should Have Held His Tongue (London: Allen Lane/Penguin Press; Dublin: Lilliput 1990), pp.137-45.
George Watson, ed., Castle Rackrent (Everyman Edn. 1964), Introduction.
Christina Edgeworth Colvin, ‘Two Unpublished MSS by Maria Edgeworth’, in Review of English Literature, ed., A. N. Jeffares, 8, 4 (October 1967), pp.53-61.
Michael Hurst, Maria Edgeworth and the Public Scene (Macmillan 1969), 206pp.
Patrick Murray, ‘The Irish Novels of Maria Edgeworth,’ in Studies, LIX (Autumn 1970), pp.267-78.
Patrick Murray, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Her Father: the Literary Partnership', in Éire-Ireland, 6, 3 (Autumn 1971), pp.39-50
James Newcomer, ‘A Tour in Connemara', in Éire-Ireland, 6, 4 (Winter 1971), pp.95-103.
Marilyn Butler Maria Edgeworth: A Literary Biography (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1972)
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English, The Romantic Period, 1789-1850, Vol. 1 (1980, ‘The Case of Miss Edgeworth’, in Rafroidi, pp.5-12.
Seamus Deane, A Short History of Irish Literature (London: Hutchinson 1982).
James Cahalan, Great Hatred, Little Room, The Irish Historical Novel (Syracuse UP/Gill & Macmillan 1983).
John Devitt, ‘Thady, Jason and the Golden Fleece’, in Michael Bevan, ed., ATE: Journal of the Association of Teachers of English, No. 10 (Spring 1983), pp.21-25
Tom Dunne, Maria Edgeworth and the Colonial Mind [O’Donnell Lecture, UCC; 27 June 1984] (Cork UP 1984), 23pp.
Tom Dunne, ‘Edgeworthstown in Fact and Fiction, 1760-1840’, in Longford: Essays in County History, ed., Raymond Gillespie and Gerard Moran (Dublin: Lilliput 1991), pp.95-121.
Benedict Kiely, A Raid into Dark Corners and Other Essays (Cork UP 1999).
‘Ned McKeown’s Two Doors: An Approach to the Novel in Ireland’ [formerly in Ireland and the Arts, ed. Tim Pat Coogan], p.5.
Robert Tracy, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Lady Morgan: Legality Verses Legitimacy’, in Nineteenth Century Fiction, Vol. 40 No. 1 (June 1985), pp.1-22.
W. J. McCormack Ascendancy and Tradition in Anglo-Irish History 1789-39 (OUP 1985).
Brian Hollingworth, Maria Edgeworth’s Irish Writing: Language, History and Politics (Macmillan 1997).
Ann Owen Weekes, Irish Women Writers: An Uncharted Tradition (Kentucky UP 1990)
Martin J. Croghan, ‘Maria Edgeworth and the Tradition of Irish Semiotics’, in Donald E. Morse, et al., eds., A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993, pp.194-206.
Mary Jean Corbett, ‘Another tale to tell: postcolonial theory and the case of Castle Rackrent’, in Criticism, 36 (Summer 1994) pp.383-400.
Terry Eagleton, ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring 1994), pp.17-26.
Terry Eagleton, Heathcliff and the Great Hunger (London: Verso 1995).
Terry Eagleton, ‘Form and Ideology in the Anglo-Irish Novel’, in Mary Massoud, ed., Literary Relations: Ireland, Egypt and the Far East (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1996), pp.135-46, p.136.).
Daniel Hack, ‘Inter-nationalism: Castle Rackrent and Anglo-Irish Union’, in Novel, 29 (Winter 1996) pp.145-64.
Colin Graham, ‘History, Gender and the Colonial Moment’, in Irish Studies Review (Spring 1996) pp.21-24.
Siobhán Kilfeather, ‘Origins of Female Gothic’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 1, 2 (Autumn 1994), pp.35-45.
Katie Trumpener, Bardic Nationalism: The Romantic Novel with the British Empire (Princeton UP 1997).
Andrew Hadfield, ‘The Trial of Jove: Spenser’s Allegory and the Mastery of the Irish’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, 2, 2 (Spring/Summer 1996), pp.39-53.
Rolf Loeber & Magda Stouthamer-Loebber, ‘Fiction available to and written for cottages and their children’, in Bernadette Cunningham and Máire Kennedy, eds., The Experience of Reading: Irish Historical Perspectives (Dublin: Rare Books Group [… &c.] 1999.
Margaret Kelleher, ‘“Philosophick Views”?: Maria Edgeworth and the Great Famine’, in Eire-Ireland 32, 1 (Spring 1997), pp.41-62.
Willa Murphy, ‘A Queen of Hearts or an Old Maid?: Maria Edgeworth's Fictions of Union’, in Dáire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, eds., Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union (Dublin: Four Courts 2001), pp.187-201.
Donald E. Morse, et al., eds., A Small Nation's Contribution to the World, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993, pp.194-206.
John Cronin, ‘The Creative Dilemma of Gerald Griffin', in Cyril J. Byrne & Margaret Harry, eds., Talamh an Eisc: Canadian and Irish Essays, Halifax, Canada: Nimbus Publ. Co. 1986, p.117;
Tom Dunne, ‘Fiction as “the best history of nations”: ‘Lady Morgan's Irish Novels', in Dunne, ed., The Writer as Witness: Literature as Historical Evidence, Cork 1987, pp.118-19;
David Lloyd, Anomalous States, 1993, p.134,
Conor McCarthy, Modernisation, Crisis and Culture in Ireland 1969-1992, Four Courts Press 2000, p.125 [citing Lloyd and ascribing it erroneously to a letter to ‘her father’ Richard Lovell Edgeworth].
Michael Hurst, Maria Edgeworth and the Public Scene (Macmillan 1969), p.223.
See also introductions to several of her works written by A. N. Jeffares (1953), George Watson (1964), and W. J. McCormack (1988), as well as discussions in Thomas Flanagan, The Irish Novelists (1959), McCormack, Ascendancy and Tradition (1985), B. G. MacCarthy, The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists 1621-1818 (Cork UP 1994), and Vera Kreilkamp, Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House (Syracuse UP; Eurospan 1999).
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NotesD. J. O’Donoghue, Poets of Ireland (Dublin: Hodges Figgis 1912) lists Comic Drama in Three Acts (London 1817) Dramas and Dialogues by M.E. [anon] (1860); work included in Samuel Lover’s Poems of Ireland, Hercules Ellis’s Songs of Ireland. IF lists Tales and Miscellaneous Pieces (1848); Castle Rackrent (1800); The Absentee (1807) [err. for 1812]; Ennui (1809); Ormond (1817); Tales from Maria Edgeworth (1912); Miss Edgeworth’s Irish Stories (1918).
Patrick Rafroidi, Irish Literature in English: The Romantic Period, 1789-1850 (Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe 1980), Vol. 2, cites as authoritative Bertha Coolidge Slade, Maria Edgeworth 1767-1849, A Bibliographical Tribute (London 1937) 253pp. Also studies by Helen Zimmern (1883), Augustus Hare (1894), Constance Hill (1910), Isabel Clarke (1949); H. W. Hausermann (1952), Elisabeth Inglis-Jones (1959), O. Elizabeth McWhirter Harden (1965), James Newcomer (Bucknell 1973), Michael Hurst (1969), Patrick Murray (in Studies 1970); Christina Colvin (1971); Patricia Lynch (1972), and several unpublished theses.
Seamus Deane, ed., Field Day Anthology of Irish Writing, gen. ed., (Derry: Field Day 1991), Vol. 1, devotes a full section to Maria Edgeworth [ed. W. J. McCormack], and extracts from Castle Rackrent; An Essay on Irish Bulls; The Absentee; Letter to Michael Pakenham Edgeworth [‘It is impossible to draw Ireland as she now is in a book of fiction (... &c.; 19 Feb. 1834)’, [1011-51]; also 1051-52, BIOG & COMM [as above].
Brian McKenna, Irish Literature, 1800-1875: A Guide to Information Sources (Detroit: Gale Research Co. 1978), cites Marilyn Butler, Maria Edgeworth (OUP 1972); James Newcomer, Maria Edgeworth [Irish Writers Series] (Lewisburg: Bucknell 1973); Frances Anne Edgeworth, A Memoir ... with selection from her letters (1867); Grace A. Oliver, A Study (Boston 1882); Emily Lawless, Maria Edgeworth (1904); The Black Book of Edgeworthstown, ed. Harriet Jessie Butler (1927), et al. Criticism cited includes George Saintsbury (Macmillan’s Magazine, 1895), Padraic Colum (British Review, 1915), Roger McHugh (Studies 1938), Honor Tracy (Bell, 1946), and Patrick Murray (Studies, 1970). NOTE, Irish Bulls is ascribed to her alone in McKenna’s Bibliography.
Peter Kavanagh, The Irish Theatre: Being a History of the Drama in Ireland from the Earlieest Period up to the Present Day (Tralee: The Kerryman 1946), lists three plays in Comic Dramas (1817), none acted; Love and Law, set in Ireland with dialect; The Two Guardians, com. set in England; and The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock, incl. sentimental portrayal of Irishman. C. G. Duggan, The Stage Irishman (1937) cites Maria Edgeworth’s plays, Love and Law, and The Rose, Thistle and Shamrock, both of which Duggan describes as sound peasant comedy. GBI cites Maria Edgeworth (Love and Law, et al. printed London 1817).
Practical Education, 2nd edn. in 3 vols. (London: for J. Johnston by J. Crowder 1801), 3 pls. (fold), 8o. [TCD; Long Room, 1978]
George Watson, ed., Castle Rackrent, An Hibernian Tale, taken from facts, and from the Manners of the Irish Squires, before the Year 1782 [World Classics (OUP 1964, reps. to 1989), cites R. F. Butler, ‘Maria Edgeworth and Sir Walter Scott, Some Unpublished Letters, 1823’, Review of English Studies, n.s., ix (1958); also ref. in The Farington Diary [held at Windsor], ed. James Greig, Vol. VIII (London 1928); Watson also cites edns. of Castle Rackrent with introductions by Anne Thackeray Ritch[i]e (1895), Brander Matthews (Everyman 1910), both with The Absentee; and A N Jeffares (Edin 1953). Sources include A Memoir of Maria Edgeworth, with a Selection from her Letters by the late Mrs [Frances] Edgeworth, 3 vols. (1867) [priv. printed]; Augustus J. C. Hare, The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, 2 vols. (1894); F. V. Barry, ed. and intro., Maria Edgeworth, Chosen Letters (London: Jonathan Cape 1931) [contains letters in Geneva]; also letters in possession of Mrs Margaret Butler, Richmond, Surrey, and NLI, Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, 2 vols. (1820) [completed by Maria]; H. J. and H. E. Butler, The Black Book of Edgeworthstown and other Edgeworth Memoirs, 1585-1817 (1927); commentaries include Hon. Emily Lawless (1904); P. H. Newby, Maria Edgeworth (1950); Isabel C. Clarke, Maria Edgeworth, Her Family and Friends ([1950]; Elisabeth Inglis-Jones, The Great Maria (1959); Bertha Coolidge Slade, Maria Edgeworth, A Bibliographical Tribute (1937) [ltd. ed.]. Watson (1964) also acknowledges assistance of Mrs Margaret Butler, widow of Harold Edgeworth Butler; Marilyn Butler, author of forthcoming study; Mrs. Christina Colvin of Oxford, et al.
Big House: Christine Case and Alistair Rowan, The Buildings of Ireland, North Leinster (Penguin), in the Pevsner architectural series, remarks that Castle Rackrent in Edgeworth’s novel is said to be modelled on Tristernagh Abbey, and characterises laissez faire attitude of successive Irish governments to architectural heritage as ‘perfect, inexcusable waste’.
Colambre?: John Nugent of Castle Nugent Culambre was a br. of Grace Nugent, the object of Carolan’s poem, cited as such in a letter of Charles O’Conor to J. C. Walker (see Letters, ed. Ward & Ward, 1988, p.455.) Note that this connection with the principal character of The Absentee is carefully elaborated by J. W. McCormack in his Oxford Classics edition of the work.
Standish O’Grady claimed in Ulrick The Ready (1899) that the wearing of what was called the Irish cloak - opprobriously mentioned in the first note to Castle Rackrent (1800) - was a custom learned from a previous generation of English colonist, viz., Richard Plantagenet.
John Wilson Croker’s anonymous Intercepted Letter from Canton (1804) is the source of Maria Edgeworth's account of the post-Union middle class in The Absentee, according to W. J. McCormack (see under Croker, RX).
Tom Paulin takes Thady in Castle Rackrent to be a parody of Edmund Burke; see Declan Kiberd, review of The Day-Star of Liberty: William Hazlitt’d Radical Prose (Faber 1998), in Irish Times, 13 June 1998.
Practical Education (1798) is usually attributed to Maria Edgeworth. Yet she explicitly writes in her Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth (1821) that the pedagogic text was begun by R.L.E. with Mrs. Honora Edgeworth in 1778: ‘[...] being the first part of ‘Harry and Lucy’ or of Practical Education, as I [M.E.] find it called in the titlepage ... printed literally for his own children and not published for many years afterwards.’ The Memoirs are not so much an edition of her father’s writings as a recasting of his autobiography - written at the behest of a son - in the form of a 3rd person biographical narrative.
G. R. Neilson, The Book of Bulls: Being a Very complete and Entertaining Essay on the Evolution of the Irish and other "Bulls". With which is Included "Essay on Irish Bulls", by the Edgeworths, published Early in the Century (London: Simkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co. Ltd., and George Tucker 1898). [Omits aspects of the Edgeworth text which editor considers ‘censorious - even ill-natured’ and publishes only its stories - not its comments or moralising’, adding fifty pages of fresh bulls ‘to bring the collection made by Dr. [sic] and Miss Edgeworth up to date’ (p.147; cited in Martin J. Croghan, ‘Maria Edgeworth and the Tradition of Irish Semiotics’, in Donald E. Morse, et al., eds., A Small Nation’s Contribution to the World, Gerrards Cross: Colin Smythe, 1993, pp.194-206.)
B. G. MacCarthy discusses Edgeworth, inter al., under the following chapter-headings of The Female Pen: Women Writers and Novelists 1621-1818 (Cork UP 1994): ‘The Oriental Novel’ (Chap. IX), and ‘The Didactic Novel with Prominent Local Colour’ (Chap. XII). Bibl. includes Constance Hill, Maria Edgeworth and her Circle in the Dayes of Bonaparte and Bourbon (1910); Emily Lawless, Maria Edgeworth (1904); A. H. Patterson, The Edgeworths (Univ. Tutorial Press 1914); Harriet Jessie Butler and Harold Edgeworth Butler, eds., The Black Book of Edgeworthstown and Other Edgeworth Memoirs 1585-1817 [sic] (1927); Helen Zimmern, Maria Edgeworth [Eminent Women Ser.] (1883).
Essay on Irish Bulls, account of author’s object, being ‘[to] succeed in diffusing a more just and enlarged idea of the Irish’ (Garland ed., 1979, p.315).
Mary Campbell (d.2001), wife and widow of Flann Campbell [son of Joseph Campbell] owned a copy of the work of Madame de Genlis with Maria Edgeworth’s signature on the front papers. Mary and Flann settled on Green Rd., Blackrock, Co. Dublin in the 1980s after a lifetime spent in London.
First Flush notice of Daire Keogh & Kevin Whelan, Acts of Union: The Causes, Contexts and Consequences of the Act of Union (Dublin: Four Courts Press 2001), refers to Castle Rackrent: ‘The metaphor of a bad marriage [...] is reflected in the text and on the cover [of Keogh & Whelan]. For instance in one essay the domineering patriarch is discussed with relation to Maria Edgeworth and her father. Her revenge is seen as being Castle Rackrent and Ennui that depict characters Kit and Jessica, Isabella and Condy, Glenthorn and Geraldine who are as mismatched in their unions as oil and vinegar. (Books Ireland, Feb. 2002, p.33.)
Belfast Public Library holds Belinda (1848); Castle Rackrent and The Absentee (1895); Castle Rackrent; Essay on Irish Bulls; Noble Science of Self-Justification, Ennui and The Dun (1848); Comic Dramas in three acts (1817); Forgive and Forget, and Rosanna, translated into Irish for the Ulster Gaelic Soc. by Thomas Feenachty (1833); Harrington,; Thoughts on Bores, and Ormond (1848); Harry and Lucy concluded (1825); Helen (1848); Irish Tales (n.d.); Manoeuvring; Almeria, and Vivian (1848); Moral Tales (1820, 1849); Ormond (1817); Patronage, Comic Dramas, Leonora, and Letters, 2 vols. (1848); Popular Tales (1848); Stories of Ireland; Castle Rackrent, and The Absentee (1886); Tales and Miscellaneous pieces, 14 v. (1825); Tour in Connemara (1950); Essay on Irish Bulls (1802); Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1820). has extensive holdings.
University of Ulster, Morris Collection holds Forgive and Forget, and Rosanna (1833); Selections from her Works (Dublin: Talbot c.1920), 419p.; Selected Tales (Dublin: Browne & Nolan 1906).
DNB Errata: Dictionary of National Biography, 7th Imp., corrects ‘letters to’ to ‘letters for’.) Further, ‘A prize essay on Ennui was read to the Academy of Berlin, which put all the judges to sleep!’ [title unnamed and unknown, cited by Marilyn Butler.]
Shell Guide to Ireland, ed. Lord Killalin [Morris] (1966) lists in Mostrim [Meathas Troim], Longford, Edgeworthstown House, home of family for 400 years; visited by Scott, 1825, by Wordsworth, 1829.
Princess Grace Irish Library (Monaco)