Maria Edgeworth

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Reproduction of the original: Helen by Maria Edgeworth

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The Parent's Assistant is the first collection of children's stories by Maria Edgeworth, published by Joseph Johnson in 1796. The first edition (Part I) had five stories: Lazy Lawrence, Tarlton, The Little Dog Trusty, The Orange Man and The False Key. Barring Out was included in the second edition of Part I published the same year. In later editions more material was added, most notably, "The Purple Jar", and a play for children, Old Poz. 1] The 1865 American edition contained the following stories: "Lazy Lawrence", "Tarlton", "The False Key", "The Birthday Present", "Simple Susan", "The Bracelets", "The Little Merchants", "Old Poz", "The Mimic", "Mademoiselle Panache", "The Basket Woman", "The White Pigeon", "The Orphans", "Waste Not, Want Not", "Forgive and Forget", "The Barring Out, or Party Spirit", and "Eton Montem" ................. Maria Edgeworth (1 January 1768 - 22 May 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She held advanced views, for a woman of her time, on estate management, politics and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo. Early life: Maria Edgeworth was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire. She was the second child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (who eventually fathered 22 children by four wives) and Anna Maria Edgeworth; Maria was thus an aunt of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth. She spent her early years with her mother's family in England, until her mother's death when Maria was five. When her father married his second wife Honora Sneyd in 1773, she went with him to his estate, Edgeworthstown, in County Longford, Ireland. Maria was sent to Mrs. Lattafi re's school in Derby after Honora fell ill in 1775. After Honora died in 1780 Maria's father married Honora's sister Elizabeth (then socially disapproved and legally forbidden from 1833 until the Deceased Wife's Sister's Marriage Act 1907). Maria transferred to Mrs. Devis's school in London. Her father's attention became fully focused on her in 1781 when she nearly lost her sight to an eye infection. Returning home at the age of 14, she took charge of her many younger siblings and was home-tutored in law, Irish economics and politics, science, and literature by her father. She also started her lifelong correspondences with learned men, mainly members of the Lunar Society. She became her father's assistant in managing the Edgeworthstown estate, which had become run-down during the family's 1777-1782 absence; she would live and write there for the rest of her life. With their bond strengthened, Maria and her father began a lifelong academic collaboration "of which she was the more able and nimble mind." Present at Edgeworthstown was an extended family, servants and tenants. She observed and recorded the details of daily Irish life, later drawing on this experience for her novels about the Irish. She also mixed with the Anglo-Irish gentry, particularly Kitty Pakenham (later the wife of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington), Lady Moira, and her aunt Margaret Ruxton of Black Castle. Margaret supplied her with the novels of Anne Radcliffe and William Godwin and encouraged her in her writing. Though Maria Edgeworth spent most of her childhood in England, her life in Ireland had a profound impact on both her thinking and views surrounding her Irish culture. Fauske and Kaufman conclude, " She] used her fiction to address the inherent problems of acts delineated by religious, national, racial, class based, sexual, and gendered identities." Edgeworth used works such Castle Rackrent and Harrington to express her feelings on controversial issues.............

In the tradition of Fanny Burney's "Evelina" and Elizabeth Inchbald's "A Simple Story", but with perhaps more serious intent, Maria Edgeworth's "Belinda" is a coming-of-age tale about a naive young girl thrust into the sophisticated world of late eighteenth-century London. Guided by Lady Delacour, the eponyous heroine must navigate her way through the maze that leads to love and marriage. Interwoven with this narrative is a sub-plot that exposes the hypocrisy of the fashionable world, as Belinda discovers Lady Delacour is estranged from both her husband and her daughter, and believes herself to be suffering from cancer, although she is unable to confide in anyone. A complex story of many strands, it is an extremely significant novel both in terms of the development of narrative fiction and the portrayal of women.