"Surely it is much more generous to forgive and remember, than to forgive and forget."

"Our Irish blunders are never blunders of the heart."

Maria Edgeworth is considered one of the most important Anglo-Irish writers for adults and children of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Her stories are at once comic and thought-provoking; her characters intelligent and resourceful; her style vivid and her dialogue lively. She was unconventional, spirited and pioneered social realism in the novel, and she was one of the most widely admired and best remunerated authors of her time.

Maria was born in Oxfordshire, England, on January 1, 1768, the third child and eldest daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Elers. After the death of her mother and following an early education in England, Maria moved to the Edgeworth estate in Co. Longford, Ireland. Her literary and educational interests were profoundly shaped by her father, an Anglo-Irish politician and inventor, who held progressive ideas on education; he encouraged his daughter to write. Maria’s first publication was Letters for Literary Ladies (1795) - a plea for reform of women’s education.

Apart from her writing, Maria’s time was absorbed by family business: she acted as her father's assistant in the management of the estate and was involved in the education of her younger siblings, (Richard Edgeworth was married four times and had twenty-two children, most of whom were educated at home). Maria worked in the library, sitting in a corner of the sofa, writing at her miniature desk while children read, talked and played around her. In 1796, Maria published The Parent’s Assistant, a collection of lively stories for children and adolescents. Two years later Practical Education was published; despite attracting some hostile critical attention for its secularist outlook, it marked her emergence as a writer of note and her reputation spread throughout  Europe and America.

Her masterpiece, Castle Rackrent, appeared anonymously in 1800 without her father’s knowledge thus avoiding his heavy-handed editing. It chronicles the misadventures of an Irish estate and its owners, the Rackrents, as told by Thady Quirk, their steward; its success was immediate and it generated considerable debate among readers and critics. Next published was Belinda, in 1801 - a lively comic novel which follows the adventures of a young woman in high society as she strives to think for herself amid the perils of the marriage market. Essay on Irish Bulls appeared the following year - a complex and witty analysis of post-Rebellion Ireland.

Maria spent various periods between 1791 and 1803 abroad; her experiences in the salons and literary circles of Europe informed some of her later novels among them Belinda (1801), Leonora (1806), The Absentee (1812), Patronage (1814), Harrinton (1817) and Helen (1834). And she continued to write for children and adolescents including Early Lessons (1801), Popular Tales (1804), and Moral Tales for Young People (1805). In 1802, she received a marriage proposal from Count Edelcrantz, a Swedish courtier, which she declined: the world she loved best was at Edgeworthstown.

Maria Edgeworth was lauded by her contemporaries and influenced younger writers of the period. Sir Walter Scott, a close friend, dubbed her “the great Maria” and claimed that he had been inspired to compose Waverley by reading her fiction. Jane Austen admired her so much, that she sent her a complimentary copy of Emma when it was published in 1815. In her last years, Maria travelled in Ireland, England, Scotland and the Continent recording her social encounters in witty, lively letters to her family. During the potato famine in Ireland (1845-49), she worked tirelessly to improve the lot of distressed tenants. She died on May 22, 1849. Asked during her lifetime to furnish biographical details, she replied with characteristic modesty that her life had been, “wholly domestic and could be of no interest to the public.” However, her obituary in The Times considered that “she had lived to become a classic...in her hands the smallest incident riveted the eye and heart.”

                                        Maria Edgeworth and Sir Walter Scott