Edgeworth, Maria
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
Maria (1767-1849), an English novelist. She was born at Hare Hatch, Berkshire. When she was twelve years old her father succeeded to the family estate of Edgeworthtown, Ireland, and removed his family thither. He educated his daughter himself. Practical Education and an Essay on Irish Bulls were joint productions of father and daughter. In 1800 Miss Edgeworth published Castle Rackrent, a novel of Irish life, which at once gave her a national reputation. Moral Tales, Popular Tales, and Tales of Fashionable Life followed. These are collections of short stories, and are probably her best work. Miss Edgeworth's novels include Leonora, Patronage, Harrington, Ormond, Belinda, and Helen, a Tale. Besides these she wrote a number of children's books: Early Lessons, Rosamond, The Parents' Assistant, Frank, Harry and Lucy. Miss Edgeworth's influence on literature was deep and lasting. Her style is easy and natural. She displays a keen sense of humor and excels in character drawing. Three of her aims were to paint national manners, to enforce morality, and to teach fashionable society by satirizing the lives of the idle and worldly. . . . As a painter of national life and manners, and an illustrator of the homelier graces of human character, Miss Edgeworth is surpassed by Sir Walter Scott alone; while as a direct moral teacher, she has no peer among novelists. Among the many sweet memories her unsullied pages have bequeathed to the world, not the least precious is her own noble character, which ever responded to all that is best and most enduring in human nature.--Thomas Gilray.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Aiton's called her "an English novelist" in 1910; today she is almost always described as Anglo-Irish, and Castle Rackrent (1800) is taught as the founding work of the Irish regional novel rather than as one title among many. The ranking Thomas Gilray offers, with Edgeworth "surpassed by Sir Walter Scott alone," has been inverted in one respect: scholars now stress that Scott himself credited her example in the postscript to Waverley, making her an influence on him rather than a runner-up. Her moral tales for children, which Aiton's thought "probably her best work," fell out of print for most of the twentieth century, while feminist and postcolonial criticism from the 1970s onward rebuilt her standing on Castle Rackrent, Belinda and Ormond. Modern reference works also correct her birth to 1 January 1768, at Black Bourton in Oxfordshire, rather than 1767 at Hare Hatch.
Written for this edition, 2026.