Born: 1 January 1768, United Kingdom
Died: 22 May 1849
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: NA
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Edwina Keown. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Edgeworth, Maria (1768–1849), novelist, essayist, and educationist, was born at Black Bourton Manor, Oxfordshire, England, the estate of the Hungerford family; her maternal grandmother was a Hungerford heiress. Her date of birth is sometimes given as 1 January 1767. Edgeworth considered her date of birth to be 1 January 1768; records at Black Bourton support this. Her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth, gentleman landowner of Edgeworthstown Estate, Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, married four times and fathered twenty-two surviving children. Maria was the second surviving child of Richard’s first marriage (by elopement) to Anna Maria Elers. As part of an educational project her older brother Richard was sent away for schooling on the Continent and became estranged from the family. After the death of her father’s second wife, Honora, Edgeworth became his assistant and intellectual correspondent.
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION
Edgeworth passed her infancy in England, with her mother’s family, apart from her father until 1773, when she moved to Ireland after her mother’s death and her father’s subsequent marriage to Honora Sneyd. Richard’s and Honora’s union was a marriage of hearts and minds. Together they initiated their ideas for practical education, believing that a child must be disciplined before the age of five. Edgeworth, past this age and undisciplined, was sent (1775–81) to Mrs Latuffiere’s boarding school in Derby, England, where she learned to compose her letters and herself, encouraged by her father, who sent her compositions and exercises to perform. In April 1780 Honora died and Richard married her sister Elizabeth Sneyd on 25 December 1780. In 1781 Edgeworth attended Mrs Dervis’s fashionable institution in Upper Wimpole St., London. This was the end of her formal schooling. In 1782 she returned to Edgeworthstown with her family, to be educated by her father in topics such as law, Irish economics and politics, science, European history, and literature.
Edgeworth maintained a lifelong correspondence with the Lunar Group, whose dispersed membership – based in the English midlands, of mechanical innovators and educationalists engaged with enlightenment practices – included her father Richard, Thomas Day (influenced by Rousseau), Dr Erasmus Darwin, the engineer James Watt, the industrial chemist James Keir, and the potter Josiah Wedgwood. The importance of letter writing and scientific experimentation influenced the form and substance of her writing career as a novelist. Her first publication, Letters for literary ladies (1795), was a response to Thomas Day’s belief that women should not be authors or taught to think.
Edgeworth’s theoretical education was counterpointed with a practical one, as her father’s assistant in estate management and educating her younger siblings. Edgeworth and Richard collaborated on a series of educational books for children such as The parent’s assistant: or stories for children (1796), Practical education (1798), and Early lessons (1801), that evolved from Richard and Honora’s educational experiments of 1777–80. Edgeworth observed and noted her siblings’ development. As her father’s assistant, she rode around the Edgeworthstown estate, which had become run down owing to the family’s absence between 1777 and 1782, observing and recording the habits and details of everyday Irish life, in particular the idioms of the peasantry. Her father’s schooling in objectivity and precision left its mark in a preference for writing that was sparse, lucid, and factual.
DOMESTIC LIFE AND CASTLE RACKRENT
Edgeworth wrote: ‘I enjoy amusement and compliments and flattery all in their just proportion, but they are as nought in my scale, compared with domestic life.’ From 1782 until her death in 1849, her home and focal point was Edgeworthstown House, her father and family and an extended family of servants and tenants: the anchor for her life and literary work, the fulcrum for her world view. Edgeworth’s literary realism evolved out of writing instructive stories and plays on local Irish topics for her family. This creative centre and audience for her work extended, through anecdotal letters, to her paternal aunt Margaret Ruxton and cousin Sophy at Black Castle, Co. Meath, and, to a lesser extent to two Co. Longford families: the Forbes and the Pakenhams. Kitty Pakenham, a close friend of Edgeworth, married Arthur Wellesley, later duke of Wellington. Margaret Ruxton was an influential critic for the embryonic author. Whereas Richard favoured facts, Margaret favoured lively character scenes and abhorred vulgarity. She supplied Edgeworth with the novels of William Godwin and Anne Radcliffe, and encouraged her to write Castle Rackrent (1800) – based on the family chronicle The Black Book of Edgeworthstown – because of the character Thady Quirk. Castle Rackrent established Edgeworth’s popular appeal. Richard wrote in 1800: ‘We hear from good authority that the king [George III] was much pleased with Castle Rackrent – he rubbed his hands and said what – what – I know something now of my Irish subjects’ (R. L. E. to D. A. Beaufort, 26 Apr. 1800, NLI, MS 10166). The novel is a gothic-satirical portrait of Anglo-Irish abuses ‘before the year 1782’. Edgeworth was the first Anglo-Irish writer to adopt the voice of an Irish catholic outsider as her narrator: Castle Rackrent’s steward Thady Quirk, who ironises the negligence of four generations of Rackrents that fed the unrest of the 1790s which resulted in the rebellion of 1798 and the act of union (1801). By the end of the novel Thady’s son, the lawyer Jason Quirk, owns Castle Rackrent, symbolising the rise of the catholic-Irish middle class whom Edgeworth feared would replace the Anglo-Irish. Castle Rackrent is an important document in the struggle for Irish national identity at a major political crossroads, and introduced the big house and gothic novel into Anglo-Irish literature.
Edgeworth personally experienced the unrest of the 1780s and 1790s. In Co. Longford, catholic Defenders targeted protestant landlords and agents, burning houses, mutilating cattle, and assaulting individuals. Richard favoured the French revolution, thereby exciting the fears of the local Longford gentry, who almost lynched him for being a French spy. Edgeworth herself was more conservative and identified with the landowning class. Her novels, in particular her Irish ones, arise from her direct experience of life at Edgeworthstown during this period: Castle Rackrent (1800), Belinda (1801), Essay on Irish bulls (1802), Ennui (1809), The absentee (1812), Patronage (1814), and Ormond (1817). They outline a clear political history of the time.
TRAVELS
Fortunately for Edgeworth, in 1798, the year of the United Irish rebellion, her father married Frances Beaufort, daughter of his politically moderate English friend the Rev. Daniel Augustus Beaufort. Frances was a year younger than Maria and filled the important role of lifelong confidante. At Dr Beaufort’s instigation, Edgeworth’s world view expanded to encompass continental and English experience. In 1799 the Edgeworths went to London. In 1801 Marc-Auguste Pictet visited Edgeworth at her home. Pictet was founder-editor with his brother Charles of the Genevese scientific and literary journal Bibliotheque Britannique, the most important cultural link existing between England and the Continent during the Napoleonic wars. He reviewed Edgeworth’s Practical education in this journal, introducing her authorship to the Continent. In 1802 Edgeworth went on a tour of the English midlands and continental Europe with Richard and Frances. She was exposed to the intellectuals of Paris through the progressive-rationalist circle of the Delesserts. There she also met Abraham Niclas Clenberg-Edelkranz, a bachelor of 46, commissioned by the Swedish king to examine new innovations in Europe, who proposed marriage to her on 3 December 1802. Despite being attracted to him, Edgeworth rejected Edelcrantz for Edgeworthstown and her writing career. Although she never saw him again, his memory spurred her writing, especially Patronage.
Initially Edgeworth favoured Paris over London. Her trip to London in May 1813, where she was received as a literary lion, and subsequent visits, overturned this opinion. This progression was instigated by Etienne Dumont, with whom Edgeworth carried on an epistolary flirtation, who advised the visit to improve the social portraits in her novels with real copy. He became a valued critic of her work: a utilitarian, he advised Edgeworth to make her didacticism implicit and move from the individual to public themes.
ORMOND
The result of this was Ormond. Edgeworth turns the Bildungsroman into a national tale, as the eponymous hero, Harry Ormond, and his adventures symbolise Ireland’s potential growth, from adolescence to maturity, as a modern European nation at the end of the eighteenth century. Ormond explores social and political transitions, from catholic landlords in former times to protestant landlords, in the years before the French revolution (1789) and the act of union (1801). Harry Ormond’s father, a protestant Irish army captain, abandoned his first wife, Harry, and Ireland, for India and a wealthy marriage. Two landowning cousins educate the now orphaned Harry: Mr Cornelius O’Shane (‘King Corny’) of the Black Islands, and Sir Ulick O’Shane of Castle Hermitage (a bosom friend of Harry’s father). Both represent extreme poles in the Irish landowning caste: the older disenfranchised catholic gentry and the new protestant landowners. As their names suggest, although blood kin, the two groups are now isolated from each other. Cornelius O’Shane retains the catholic faith and lifestyle of the Gaelic gentry; Sir Ulick O’Shane, a protestant convert, is a new type of Anglo–Irish landlord, paying court at Dublin castle, looking to England for political direction. The novel favours Cornelius’s ability, honesty, and ecumenical perspective over Sir Ulick’s jobbing, but asserts that Cornelius must modernise and politically engage with the whole of Ireland, beyond his fiefdom.
The Anglo–Irish Lady Annaly shows Ormond an enlightened third way. Her son, Sir Herbert Annaly, is the ideal Irish landlord because he combines abstract justice with a kind heart. On a grand tour of Paris, Ormond values the Annalys’ domestic circle over the French court, and deems it the equal of Parisian intellectual circles. He impresses M. l’Abbé Morellet (one of the Encyclopèdistes; Edgeworth met him in Paris in 1802) and Jean-François Marmontel (whose moral and philosophical tales, Contes moraux (2 vols, 1763), influenced Edgeworth’s fiction), whose ideas Ormond brings back to Ireland. Ancien régime Paris is a warning to Irish protestant landlords in the nineteenth century, as Edgeworth spotlights the French nobility’s blind contempt for the ordinary citizen.
Harry Ormond combines the best in Cornelius and Sir Ulick O’Shane: he is an Irish patriot open to Continental and English values, a protestant landlord who understands his catholic neighbours and treats his tenants with respect. He receives his economic, and thereby political, independence not from the older catholic Irish gentry or new protestant landlord system, but from colonial trade after the fortuitous death of his stepmother and half-brother in India. Ormond’s wealth enables him to marry Florence Annaly and purchase either the Black Islands or Castle Hermitage. He chooses the Black Islands, and his marriage creates a utopian Ireland where protestant landlords inherit the Gaelic tradition and its values, using it to build a modern protestant Ireland, the equal of European nations. Ormond implicitly rejects the union and profligate landlords; it favours a patriotic Irish identity, concern for the educational, moral, and physical well-being of Ireland, and interest in trade with the Americas and the East.
LATER YEARS
Edgeworth’s father died in June 1817. She was devastated and spent most of 1817–20 incapacitated. She completed his Memoirs but was deeply hurt by their adverse reception when published in 1820. After this, Edgeworth revived and flourished for the next decade as a literary social presence. She visited Paris in 1820 and London in 1821, 1822, and 1830 with Frances, and her favourite step-sisters, Fanny and Harriet. She became a brilliant centre for London society; as a talented anecdotist she entertained politicians and scientists. In 1823 she visited Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford, one of the most enjoyable experiences of her life. Scott returned this visit in 1825. From this point onwards Edgeworth’s world contracted to focus on her home in Edgeworthstown. William Wordsworth visited her there in 1829; she was underwhelmed.
Edgeworthstown estate suffered financial difficulties under the trusteeship of Edgeworth’s brother, Lovell. In 1826 she took over estate management until 1839 and proved a tough businesswoman, steering it through this crisis. She spent her final years at Edgeworthstown, only visiting London twice more (1840, 1843). She was elected an honorary member of the Royal Irish Academy in 1842, only the fourth woman but also the first Irishwoman to be so honoured. On 22 May 1849 she returned from a drive with a pain around her heart and died a few hours later in the arms of her stepmother and friend, Frances.
REPUTATION AND INFLUENCE
Edgeworth was a prolific writer – both for children and adults – an astute businesswoman, and an engaging companion, adroit at observing and mimicking life. Lionised in her own time, she was superseded by the Victorian novelists, but enjoyed a renaissance from the 1970s with Marilyn Butler’s biography, new invigoration in the field of Anglo-Irish studies, and the republication of her work in the 1990s by Oxford University Press, Penguin Classics, and Pickering & Chatto. Edgeworth is the first novelist to examine human society through focusing on the local. Jane Austen admired her, Sir Walter Scott modelled Waverley (1814) on The absentee, and there is an apocryphal story that Turgenev’s peasant sketches draw on Edgeworth’s. Her Irish novels, exploring relations between protestant settler and catholic native mindsets, were instrumental in developing the realist novel in English, and gave birth to the following sub-genres: the regional novel, national tale, socio-historical novel, and big-house novel.
The bulk of Edgeworth’s manuscripts and letters are in the NLI. The locations of other manuscripts are listed in Butler (p. 501). Christina Colvin has edited Edgeworth’s letters from England (1971). A detailed bibliography of her published work can be found in Bulter (p. 504) and in Slade.
From Famous Women: An Outline of Feminine Achievement Through the Ages With Life Stories of Five Hundred Noted Women. Written by Joseph Adelman, published 1926 by Ellis M Lonow Company:
Maria Edgeworth, an Irish novelist, daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the writer.
Her stories represent a distinct stop in the development of fiction in English and are progenitors of similar productions including Sir Walter Scott’s novels of Scottish life.
Miss Edgeworth was also the first to give attention to peasant life, and Turgenev confesses that his studies of the Russian peasant were suggested in her work.
In 1802 she established her reputation as an author by Castle Rackrent, a novel of Irish life, in which the manners and customs of a by-gone generation are most graphically and humorously described.
This was followed by: Moral Tales, Popular Tales, and Tales of Fashionable Life, all written in clear and vigorous style, and highly entertaining.
After her father’s death, in 1817 she occupied herself with completing his Memoirs, and in later years her production was less, though she worked to the last, and in 1846 labored strenuously for the relief of the famine-stricken Irish peasants.
From Woman: Her Position, Influence and Achievement Throughout the Civilized World. Designed and Arranged by William C. King. Published in 1900 by The King-Richardson Co. Copyright 1903 The King-Richardson Co.:
Maria Edgeworth, English Novelist, 1768 – 1849 A.D
This English writer was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, an inventor and author. She was born in Berkshire, January 1, 1767, and died in Edgeworthtown, Ireland, June 13, 1849. She was fifteen years of age when her father succeeded to the family estate in Ireland, where under his direction she pursued her studies, formed habits of sharp observation, and developed that cheerfulness which made her literary pursuits she seems never to have wished to be married; and as it had been the delight of her father to assist in developing her talent, she in return loved to remain by the family hearth, gratifying his earnest but lest gifted mind by her literary successes, and repaying in his old age those attentions which she received in youth.
The series of her novels began with Castle Rackrent, and continued without interruption until 1817, during which period there appeared from her pen, Belinda, Popular Tales, Leonora, Tales of Fashionable Life, Patronage, Harrington, and Ormond. The aim of Miss Edgeworth, like Joanna Baille in her dramas, was to make each novel an elucidation of one particular passion or vice.
On the death of her father in 1817 her career of authorship was for a time interrupted. She did not resume her works of fiction till she had expressed her affection for him by completing the memoirs which he had begun of his own life. Not until 1834 was her exquisite story of Helen published; and her literary career ended with the child’s story of Orlandino, which appeared in 1847. With the exception of a trip to the continent and a short residence at Clifton, she passed the latter years of her life at Edgeworthtown, unspoiled by literary fame, love in the family circle which daily assembled in the library, and admired by all as a pattern of an intellectual and amiable woman.
The following is excerpted from A Cyclopædia of Female Biography, published 1857 by Groomsbridge and Sons and edited by Henry Gardiner Adams.
EDGEWORTH, MARIA, Descended from a respectable Irish family, was born in Oxfordshire, January 1st., 1767. Her father was Richard Lovell Edgeworth, Esq., who, succeeding to an estate in Ireland, removed thither when Maria was about four years old. The family residence was at Edgeworthstown, Longford county; and here the subject of our sketch passed her long and most useful life, leaving an example of literary excellence and beneficent goodness, rarely surpassed in the annals of woman.
Mr. Edgeworth was a man of talent, who devoted his original and very active mind chiefly to subjects of practical utility. Mechanics and general literature were his pursuits, in so far as he could make these subservient to his theories of education and improvement; but his heart was centred in his home, and his eldest child, Maria, was his pride. She early manifested a decided taste for literary pursuits; and it appears to have been one of her father’s greatest pleasures to direct her studies and develope her genius. This sympathy and assistance were of invaluable advantage to her at the beginning of her literary career; and sweetly did she repay these attentions when her own ripened talents outstripped his more methodical but less gifted intellect!
The father and daughter wrote, at first, together, and several works were their joint productions. The earliest book thus written in partnership was “Practical Education;” the second bore the title of “An Essay on Irish Bulls,” which does not sound significantly of a young lady’s agency, yet the book was very popular, because, with much wit, there was deep sympathy with the peculiar virtues of the Irish character, and pathetic touches in the stories illustrating Irish life, which warmed and won the heart of the reader. Miss Edgeworth was an earnest philanthropist, and herein lay the secret strength of her literary power. She felt for the wants and weaknesses of humanity; but as she saw human nature chiefly in Irish nature, her thoughts were directed towards the improvement of her adopted country, rather more, we suspect, from propinquity, than patriotism. Be this as it may, her best novels are those in which Irish character is pourtrayed; but her best books are those written for the young, because in these her genuine philanthropy is most freely unfolded.
From the beginning of the century, 1800, when Miss Edgeworth commenced her literary career, till 1825, almost every year was the herald of a new work from the pen of this distinguished lady. “Castle Rackrent,” “Belinda,” “Leonora,” “Popular Tales,” “Tales of Fashionable Life,” “Patronage,” “Vivian,” “Harrington and Ormond,” followed each other rapidly, and all were welcomed and approved by the public voice. In 1817, Mr. Edgeworth died, and Maria’s profound sorrow for his loss suspended for some time her career of authorship. She did not resume her tales of fiction until she had given expression to her filial affection and gratitude to her father for his precious care in training her mind and encouraging her talents, and also to her deep and tender grief for his loss, by completing the “Memoir,” he had commenced of his own life. This was published in 1820. Then she resumed her course of moral instruction for the young, and published that work, which so many children both in England and America, have been happier and better for reading, namely, “Rosamond, a Sequel to Early Lessons.” In 1825, “Harriet and Lucy,” a continuation of the “Early Lessons,” in four volumes, was issued.
In 1823, Miss Edgeworth visited Sir Walter Scott at Abbotsford. “Never,” says Mr. Lockhart, “did I see a brighter day at Abbotsford than that on which Miss Edgeworth first arrived there; never can I forget her look and accent when she was received by him at his archway, and exclaimed, ‘Everything about you is exactly what one ought to have had wit enough to dream.’ The weather was beautiful, and the edifice and its appurtenances were all but complete; and day after day. so long as she could remain, her host had some new plan of gaiety. Miss Edgeworth remained a fortnight at Abbotsford. Two years afterwards, she had an opportunity of repaying the hospitalities of her entertainer, by receiving him at Edgeworthstown, where Sir Walter met with as cordial a welcome, and where he found, ‘neither mud hovels nor naked peasantry, but snug cottages and smiling faces all about.’ Literary fame had spoiled neither of these eminent persons, nor unfitted them for the common business and enjoyment of life. ‘We shall never,’ said Scott, ‘learn to feel and respect our calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine compared with the education of the heart.’ Maria did not listen to this without some water in her eyes; her tears were always ready when any generous string was touched—(for, as Pope says, “the finest minds, like the finest metals, dissolve the easiest;”) but she brushed them gaily aside, and said, ‘You see how it is; Dean Swift said he had written his books in order that people might learn to treat him like a great lord. Sir Walter writes his in order that he may be able to treat his people as a great lord ought to do.'”
In 1834, Miss Edgeworth made her last appearance as a novelist, with the exquisite story of “Helen,” in three volumes. It is her best work of fiction, combining with truth and nature more of the warmth of fancy and pathos of feeling than she displayed in her earlier writings. As though the last beams from the sun of her genius had, like the departing rays of a long unclouded day, become softer in their brightness and beauty, while stealing away from the world they had blessed.
Miss Edgeworth wrought out her materials of thought into many forms, and coloured these with the rainbow tinting of her fancy, and ornamented them with the polished beauty of benevolent feeling; but the precious gold of truth, which she first essayed, makes the sterling worth of all her books. And what a number she has written! The term of her life was long, but measured by what she accomplished seems to comprise the two centuries in which she lived. So quiet and easy was her death, it seemed but a sweet sleep, after only a half-hour’s illness. She died, May 21st., 1849, in her eighty-third year, ripe in good works, and in the “charity which never faileth.”
The following is excerpted from the Dictionary of National Biography, originally published between 1885 and 1900, by Smith, Elder & Co. It was written by Leslie Stephen.
EDGEWORTH, MARIA (1767–1849), novelist, was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth [q. v.], by his first wife, Anna Maria Elers. She was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, the house of her mother’s father, on 1 Jan. 1767, and there spent her infancy. On her father’s second marriage (1773) she went with him to Ireland; and on the failure of her stepmother’s health in 1775 she was sent to school with a Mrs. Lattaffière at Derby. In 1780, after the death of her stepmother, she was removed to a Mrs. Davis, in Upper Wimpole Street, London. She suffered much from attempts to increase her growth by mechanical devices, including hanging by the neck. In spite of this ingenious contrivance she always remained small. She learnt to dance, though she could never learn music; she had given early proofs of talent at her first school; she was a good French and Italian scholar, and, like Scott, won credit as a story-teller from her schoolfellows. Some of her holidays were spent with Thomas Day, her father’s great friend, at Anningsley, Surrey. He dosed her with tar-water for an inflammation of the eyes, which had threatened a loss of sight, but encouraged her studies, gave her good advice, and won her permanent respect. In 1782 she accompanied her father and his third wife to Edgeworthstown, and upon his suggestion began to translate Mme. de Genlis’s ‘Adèle et Théodore.’ Though still very shy, she saw some good society; she was noticed by Lady Moira, who often stayed with her daughter, Lady Granard, at Castle Forbes, and was frequently at Pakenham Hall, belonging to Lord Longford, a connection and a close friend of Edgeworth’s. Her father employed her in keeping accounts and in dealing with his tenants. The education of her little brother Henry was entrusted to her care. She thus acquired the familiarity with fashionable people and with the Irish peasantry which was to be of use in her novels, as well as a practical knowledge of education. Her father made her a confidential friend, and though timid on horseback she delighted in long rides with him for the opportunity of conversation. He became her adviser, and to some extent her collaborator in the literary work which for some years was her main occupation. She began to write stories on a slate, which she read to her sisters, and copied out if approved by them. She wrote the ‘Freeman Family,’ afterwards developed into ‘Patronage,’ for the amusement of her stepmother, Elizabeth, when recovering from a confinement in 1787. In 1791 her father took his wife to England, and Maria was left in charge of the children, with whom she joined the parents at Clifton in December. They returned to Edgeworthstown at the end of 1793. Here, while taking her share in the family life, she first made her appearance as an author. The ‘Letters to Literary Ladies,’ a defence of female education, came out in 1795. In 1796 appeared the first volume of the ‘Parent’s Assistant.’ In 1798 the marriage of her father to his fourth wife, to which she had at first a natural objection, brought her an intimate friend in her new stepmother. For fifty-one years their affectionate relations were never even clouded. The whole family party, which included, besides the children, two sisters of the second Mrs. Edgeworth, Charlotte Sneyd (d. 1822) and Mary Sneyd (d. 1841, aged 90), lived together on the most affectionate terms. In 1798 she published, in conjunction with her father, two volumes upon ‘Practical Education,’ presenting in a number of discursive essays a modification of the theories started by Rousseau’s ‘Émile,’ and adopted by Edgeworth and Day. Other books for children exemplified the application of these theories to childish literature. ‘Harry and Lucy’ was begun by Edgeworth and his wife Honora, and Day had originally written ‘Sandford and Merton’ for insertion as one of the stories. In 1800 Miss Edgeworth began her novels for adult readers by ‘Castle Rackrent.’ It was published anonymously, and was written without her father’s assistance. Its vigorous descriptions of Irish character caused a rapid success, and the second edition appeared with her name. It was followed by ‘Belinda’ in 1801. In 1802 appeared the ‘Essay on Irish Bulls,’ by herself and her father. Miss Edgeworth had now won fame as an authoress. The ‘Practical Education’ had been translated by M. Pictet of Geneva, who also published translations of the ‘Moral Tales’ in his ‘Bibliothèque Britannique.’ He visited the Edgeworths in Ireland; and she soon afterwards accompanied her father on a visit to France during the peace of Amiens, receiving many civilities from distinguished literary people. At Paris she met a Swedish count, Edelcrantz, who made her an offer. As she could not think of retiring to Stockholm, and he felt bound to continue there, the match failed. Her spirits suffered for a time, and though all communication dropped she remembered him through life, and directly after her return wrote ‘Leonora,’ a novel intended to meet his tastes. The party returned to England in March 1803, and, after a short visit to Edinburgh, to Edgeworthstown, where Maria set to work upon her stories. She wrote in the common sitting-room, amidst all manner of domestic distractions, and submitted everything to her father, who frequently inserted passages of his own. ‘Popular Tales’ and the ‘Modern Griselda’ appeared in 1804, ‘Leonora’ in 1806, the first series of ‘Tales of Fashionable Life’ (containing ‘Eunice,’ ‘The Dun,’ ‘Manœuvring,’ and ‘Almeria’) in 1809, and the second series (the ‘Absentee,’ ‘Vivian,’ and ‘Mme. de Fleury’) in 1812. On a visit to London in the spring of 1803 the Edgeworths attracted much notice. Byron, who laughed at the father, admitted that Miss Edgeworth was simple and charming (Diary, 19 Jan. 1821), Crabb Robinson gives a similar account, and Mackintosh (Life, ii. 262) confirms the opinion, and says that she ‘was courted by all persons of distinction in London with an avidity almost without example.’ On her return she finished ‘Patronage,’ begun (see above) in 1787, which came out in 1814. She set to work upon ‘Harrington’ and ‘Ormond,’ which were published together in 1817. She received a few sheets in time to give them to her father on his birthday, 31 May 1817. He had been specially interested in ‘Ormond,’ to which he had contributed a few scenes. He wrote a short preface to the book, and died 13 June following. After Edgeworth’s death his unmarried son Lovell kept up the house. Edgeworth had left his ‘Memoirs’ to his daughter, with an injunction to complete them and publish his part unaltered. She had prepared the book for press in the summer of 1818, though in much depression, due to family troubles, to sickness among the peasantry, and to an alarming weakness of the eyes. She gave up reading, writing, and needlework almost entirely for two years, when her eyes completely recovered. Her sisters meanwhile acted as amanuenses. She visited Bowood in the autumn of 1818, chiefly to take the advice of her friend Dumont upon the ‘Memoirs.’ In 1819 she was again in London, and in 1820 she went with two sisters to Paris, where she was petted by the best society, and afterwards to Geneva, returning to Edgeworthstown in March 1821. The ‘Memoirs’ were published during her absence in 1820, and were bitterly attacked in the ‘Quarterly Review.’ They reached a second edition in 1828, and a third in 1844, when she rewrote her own part.
She again settled to her domestic and literary occupations. During the rest of her life Edgeworthstown continued to be her residence, though she frequently visited London, and made occasional tours. The most remarkable was a visit to Scotland in the spring of 1823. Scott welcomed her in the heartiest way, and, after seeing her at Edinburgh, received her at Abbotsford. She had read the ‘Lay of the Last Minstrel’ on its first appearance during her convalescence from a low fever in 1805. Scott declared (in the last chapter of ‘Waverley,’ and afterwards in the preface to the collected novels) that her descriptions of Irish character had encouraged him to make a similar experiment upon Scottish character in the ‘Waverley’ novels. He sent her a copy of ‘Waverley’ on its first publication, though without acknowledging the authorship, and she replied with enthusiasm. On a personal acquaintance he surpassed her expectations. In 1825 Scott returned the visit at Edgeworthstown, and she made a trip with him to Killarney. He entertained a large party of Edgeworths at Dublin before leaving, and they drank his health upon his birthday (15 Aug.) They never again met, but their correspondence was always most cordial.
During the commercial troubles of 1826 Miss Edgeworth resumed the management of the estate for her brother Lovell, having given up receiving the rents on her father’s death. She showed great business talent, and took a keen personal interest in the poor upon the estate. Although greatly occupied by such duties, she again took to writing, beginning her last novel, ‘Helen,’ about 1830. It did not appear till 1834, and soon reached a second edition. It had scarcely the success of her earlier stories. Her style had gone out of fashion. In the spring of 1834 she made a tour in Connemara, described with great vivacity in a long letter printed in her ‘Memoirs.’ Amidst her various occupations Miss Edgeworth’s intellectual vivacity remained. She began to learn Spanish at the age of seventy. She kept up a correspondence which in some ways gives even a better idea of her powers than her novels. She paid her last visit to London in 1844. She gave much literary advice to Captain Basil Hall, and she discussed her own novels in reply to friendly critics with remarkable ability. She knew more or less most of the eminent literary persons of her time, including Joanna Baillie, with whom she stayed at Hampstead, Bentham’s friend, Sidney Smith, Dumont, and Ricardo, whom she visited at Gatcombe Park, Gloucestershire. Miss Austen sent her ‘Emma’ upon its first appearance. Miss Edgeworth admired her work, though it does not appear that they had any personal relations.
During the famine of 1846 Miss Edgeworth did her best to relieve the sufferings of the people. Some of her admirers in Boston, Mass., sent a hundred and fifty barrels of flour addressed to ‘Miss Edgeworth for her poor.’ The porters who carried it ashore refused to be paid, and she sent to each of them a woollen comforter knitted by herself. The deaths of her brother Francis in 1846 and of her favourite sister Fanny in 1848 tried her severely, and she was already weakened by attacks of illness. She worked to the last, and in April 1849 welcomed the appearance of Macaulay’s ‘History,’ in which a complimentary reference is made to her in an enthusiastic letter to an old friend, Dr. Holland. She died in the arms of her stepmother on 22 May 1849.
Miss Edgeworth was of diminutive stature, and apparently not beautiful. No portrait was ever taken. It seems from Scott’s descriptions of her that her appearance faithfully represented the combined vivacity and good sense and amiability of her character. No one had stronger family affections, and the lives of very few authors have been as useful and honourable. The didacticism of the stories for children has not prevented their permanent popularity. Her more ambitious efforts are injured by the same tendency. She has not the delicacy of touch of Miss Austen, more than the imaginative power of Scott. But the brightness of her style, her keen observation of character, and her shrewd sense and vigour make her novels still readable, in spite of obvious artistic defects. Though her puppets are apt to be wooden, they act their parts with spirit enough to make us forgive the perpetual moral lectures.
Miss Edgeworth’s works are: 1. ‘Letters to Literary Ladies,’ 1795. 2. ‘Parent’s Assistant,’ first part, 1796; published in 6 vols. in 1800; ‘Little Plays’ afterwards added as a seventh volume. 3. ‘Practical Education,’ 1798. 4. ‘Castle Rackrent,’ 1800. 5. ‘Early Lessons,’ 1801; sequels to ‘Harry and Lucy,’ ‘Rosamond,’ and ‘Frank,’ from the ‘Early Lessons,’ were published, 1822–5. 6. ‘Belinda,’ 1801. 7. ‘Moral Tales,’ 1801. 8. ‘Irish Bulls,’ 1802. 9. ‘Popular Tales,’ 1804. 10. ‘Modern Griselda,’ 1804. 11. ‘Leonora,’ and ‘Letters,’ 1806. 12. ‘Tales from Fashionable Life’ (first series, ‘Eunice,’ ‘The Dun,’ ‘Manœuvring,’ ‘Almeria’), 1809; (second series, ‘Vivian,’ the ‘Absentee,’ ‘Madame de Fleury,’ ‘Emilie de Coulanges’), 1812. 13. ‘Patronage,’ 1814? 14. ‘Harrington’ and ‘Ormond,’ 1817; ‘Harrington’ was reprinted with the ‘Thoughts on Bores,’ from 15. ‘Comic Dramas,’ 1817. 16. ‘Memoirs of R. L. Edgeworth’ (vol. ii. by Maria), 1820. 17. ‘Helen,’ 1834. 18. ‘Orlandino,’ 1834.
Miss Edgeworth’s books for children have been reprinted in innumerable forms, and often translated. The first collective edition of her novels appeared in fourteen volumes, 1825, others 1848, 1856.