Edgeworth, Maria (1768–1849), was the eldest daughter of the first wife of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744–1817), a wealthy Irish landlord. He was an eccentric, radical, and inventive man, deeply interested in the practical applications of science and in education. His influence on Maria was profound; he frequently ‘edited’ her work, managed her career, and imparted to her many of his own enthusiasms. They wrote together
Practical Education (1798), a treatise which owes much to
Rousseau.
Maria spent most of her life with her family in Ireland. Her first publication was
Letters to Literary Ladies (1795), a plea for women's education. Sir W.
Scott acknowledged his debt to her Irish novels in the preface to his ‘Waverley’ edition of 1829.
Miss Edgeworth appears to have initiated, in
Castle Rackrent, both the first fully developed
regional novel and the first true
historical novel in English, pointing the way to the historical/regional novels of Scott. Her writings fall into three groups: those based on Irish life (considered her finest),
Castle Rackrent (1800) and
The Absentee (first published in
Tales of Fashionable Life in 1812) together with the lesser
Ormond (1817); those depicting contemporary English society, such as
Belinda (1801),
Leonora (1806),
Patronage (1814), and
Helen (1834); and her many popular lessons and stories for and about children, including
The Parent's Assistant (1796–1800),
Moral Tales (1801),
Popular Tales (1804), and
Harry and Lucy Concluded (1825).
