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Set in Ireland prior to its achieving legislative independence from
Britain in 1782, Castle Rackrent tells the story of three
generations of an estate--owning family as seen through the
eyes-and as told in the voice-of their longtime servant, Thady
Quirk, recorded and commented on by an anonymous Editor. This
edition of Maria Edgeworth's first novel is based on the 1832
edition, the last revised by her, and includes Susan Kubica
Howard's foot-of-the-page notes on the text of the memoir as well
as on the notes and glosses the Editor offers "for the information
of the ignorant English reader." Howard's Introduction situates the
novel in its political and historical context and suggests a
reading of the novel as Edgeworth's contribution to the discussion
of the controversial Act of Union between Ireland and Britain that
went into effect immediately after the novel's publication in
London in 1800.
1 January 2018 will be the 250th anniversary of Maria Edgeworth's
birth. Valerie Pakenham's sparkling new selection of over four
hundred letters, many hitherto unpublished, will help to celebrate
her memory. Born in England, she was brought to live in Ireland at
the age of fourteen and spent most of the rest of her life at the
family home at Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford. Encouraged by her
remarkable father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, whose memoirs she
edited, she became, in turn, famous for her children's stories, her
practical guides to education and her novels - or, as she preferred
to call them, `Moral Tales'. By 1813, when visiting London, she
was, as Byron testified, as great a literary lion as he had been
the season before, and she was hugely admired by fellow novelists
Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austen. Maria Edgeworth's posthumous fame
has dwindled and only her first novel, Castle Rackrent (1800), a
brilliant burlesque account of the Irish squirearchy, is still
widely read. She was, however, a prolific and fascinating letter
writer. She insisted that her letters were for private consumption
only, but after her death, her stepmother and half-sisters produced
a private memoir for friends using carefully selected extracts.
Their literary quality was spotted by Augustus Hare, whose
shortened version, The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth,
appeared in 1894. In the 1970s Maria's great great niece, Christina
Colvin edited Maria Edgeworth's Letters from England and Maria
Edgeworth in France & Switzerland. No one, however, has
revisited fully Maria's original letters from the place she loved
and knew best: Ireland. From 1825, Maria's letters reflect sixty
years of Irish history, from the heady days of Grattan's
Parliament, through the perils of the 1798 Rebellion to the rise of
O'Connell and the struggle for Catholic Emancipation. In old age,
she worked actively to alleviate the Great Famine and wrote her
last story to raise money aged 82. A treasure trove of stories,
humour, local and high-level gossip, her letters show the
extraordinary range of her interests: history, politics, literature
and science. Maria almost single-handedly took over the management
of her family estate and restored it to solvency. Her later letters
brim with delight at these practical undertakings and her affection
for the local people she worked with. Two of her half-sisters and
her stepmother were gifted artists, and Valerie Pakenham has been
able to use many of their unpublished drawings and sketches to
illustrate this book.
'It is singular, that my having spent a winter with one of the most
dissipated women in England should have sobered my mind so
completely.' Maria Edgeworth's 1801 novel, Belinda, is an
absorbing, sometimes provocative, tale of social and domestic life
among the English aristocracy and gentry. The heroine of the title,
only too conscious of being 'advertised' on the marriage market,
grows in moral maturity as she seeks to balance self-fulfilment
with achieving material success. Among those whom she encounters
are the socialite Lady Delacour, whose brilliance and wit hide a
tragic secret, the radical feminist Harriot Freke, the handsome and
wealthy Creole gentleman Mr Vincent, and the mercurial Clarence
Hervey, whose misguided idealism has led him into a series of
near-catastrophic mistakes. In telling their story Maria Edgeworth
gives a vivid picture of life in late eighteenth-century London,
skilfully showing both the attractions of leisured society and its
darker side, and blending drawing-room comedy with challenging
themes involving serious illness, obsession, slavery and
interracial marriage.
Castle Rackrent s publication in 1800 signaled many firsts: the
first historical novel, the first regional novel in English, the
first big house novel, the first Anglo-Irish novel, and the first
novel with a narrator who is neither reliable nor part of the
action. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the Baldwin &
Cradock edition that appeared as part of an eighteen-volume
collected edition titled Tales and Novels of Maria Edgeworth (1832
33). It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. Ryan
Twomey focuses the volume s Backgrounds and Contexts on Edgeworth s
importance as a writer, the influence of contemporary historical
events on her writing (most importantly, the Act of Union of 1800,
which united Ireland and Great Britain), and Castle Rackrent s
impact on the development of the novel. These include a selection
of Edgeworth s letters; five major contemporary reviews;
biographical pieces; Sir Walter Scott on Edgeworth and her response
to him; and excerpts from Edgeworth s juvenilia, The Double
Disguise. Criticism is thematically organized to give readers a
clear sense of Castle Rackrent s major themes: Irish writing and
specifically the Irish novel, narrative voices, patriarchy and
paternalism, and Edgeworth s Hiberno-English writing. Contributors
include Seamus Deane, Marilyn Butler, Katherine O Donnell, Julia
Nash, Joyce Flynn, and Brian Hollingsworth, among others. A
chronology of Edgeworth s life and work and a selected bibliography
are also included."
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Harrington (Paperback)
Maria Edgeworth; Edited by Susan Manly
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R927
Discovery Miles 9 270
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Harrington (1817) is the personal narrative of a recovering
anti-Semite, a young man whose phobia of Jews is instilled in early
childhood and who must unlearn his irrational prejudice when he
falls in love with the daughter of a Spanish Jew. In this novel,
Edgeworth attempts to challenge prejudice and to show how literary
representations affect public policy, while at the same time
interrogating contemporary understandings of freedom in English
society. This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction
and a judicious selection of appendices, including correspondence
between Edgeworth and Rachel Mordecai Lazarus, excerpts from John
Toland's Letters to Serena and Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews,
an excerpt from Isaac D'Israeli's article on Moses Mendelssohn, and
contemporary reviews of the novel.
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Castle Rackrent (Hardcover)
Maria Edgeworth; Edited by Susan Kubica Howard
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R873
R811
Discovery Miles 8 110
Save R62 (7%)
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Ships in 12 - 17 working days
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Set in Ireland prior to its achieving legislative independence from
Britain in 1782, Castle Rackrent tells the story of three
generations of an estate--owning family as seen through the
eyes-and as told in the voice-of their longtime servant, Thady
Quirk, recorded and commented on by an anonymous Editor. This
edition of Maria Edgeworth's first novel is based on the 1832
edition, the last revised by her, and includes Susan Kubica
Howard's foot-of-the-page notes on the text of the memoir as well
as on the notes and glosses the Editor offers "for the information
of the ignorant English reader." Howard's Introduction situates the
novel in its political and historical context and suggests a
reading of the novel as Edgeworth's contribution to the discussion
of the controversial Act of Union between Ireland and Britain that
went into effect immediately after the novel's publication in
London in 1800.
In their moral tales, writers such as Hannah More, Amelia Opie, and
Maria Edgeworth embraced explicitly didactic aims, seeking to
instill normative moral behavior in their readers while
entertaining them with vivid, emotional storytelling. In More's
'Tawney Rachel,' for example, a servant girl suffers severe
consequences for succumbing to superstition; in Opie's 'The Black
Velvet Pelisse,' a young woman is rewarded for a charitable act
with a desirable marriage; and in Edgeworth's 'The Dun,' a wealthy
man's selfishness destroys a poor family before he finally sees the
error of his ways.This edition offers a selection of five short
fictions by More, Opie, and Edgeworth-the best-known writers of the
moral tale-prefaced by a critical introduction to the genre and its
place in the complex and fascinating debates surrounding the
writing and reading of fiction in the Romantic period. The volume
concludes with a variety of background materials that help situate
the moral tale in its late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century
literary contexts, including moral tales for children, theories of
education, and contemporary reviews.
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