Maria Edgeworth
1) Belinda
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Maria Edgeworth takes on issues of gender and race in her early editions of "Belinda", and although later editions tone down some controversial material to appease audiences, the alterations were most likely made by Edgeworth's father. Edgeworth's story centers around Belinda, a young woman who is navigating the complicated path of courtship and the limitations of domesticity. When Belinda is sent to live with the fashionable Lady Delacour, in hopes...
2) The Absentee
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Lord Colambre can see that his pretentious mother's social ambitions earn her nothing but contempt from London's fashionable society. And it's come to his attention that his father's finances have suffered a good deal underwriting his wife's extravagances.
Anxious about his family's fortunes, Colambre departs Cambridge for Ireland to assess his father's estates firsthand. There he finds his absent father's tenants sorely put upon by the estate's agent....
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Faithful family employee Thady Quirk recounts the decline, over four generations, of the Rackrent family. Through gambling, hapless litigation, and general extravagance the Rackrent's ruin is accomplished, but Thady is steadfast in defence of his masters.
With the short novel Castle Rackrent, Maria Edgeworth is said to have originated a number of literary genres and subgenres, including the historical novel, the Anglo-Irish novel and the "Big House"...
4) Ormond
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Maria Edgeworth's Ormond tells the story of Harry Ormond, a destitute orphan sent to live with his guardian's wealthy cousin, King Corny, after his involvement in a nearly fatal shooting. Ormond travels to France, determined to raise his status and build his wealth, and encounters the country's complex political scene, which reflects sentiments similar to Ireland's revolutionary politics. Ormond was Edgeworth's attempt to show the difference in morality...
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Excerpt: "Mrs. Stanhope, a well-bred woman, accomplished in that branch of knowledge which is called the art of rising in the world, had, with but a small fortune, contrived to live in the highest company. She prided herself upon having established half a dozen nieces most happily, that is to say, upon having married them to men of fortunes far superior to their own. One niece still remained unmarried-Belinda Portman, of whom she was determined to...
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Excerpt: "To be candid with you, my dear young friend, my secret reason for denying myself the pleasure of Tuesday's fête is, that I have just heard that there is a shocking chicken-pox in the village near you; and I confess it is one of my weaknesses to dread even the bare rumour of such a thing, on account of my Amelia: but I should not wish to have this mentioned in your house, because you must be sensible your father would think it an idle womanish...
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Excerpt: "How the wind is rising!" said Rosamond.-"God help the poor people at sea to-night!" Her brother Godfrey smiled.-"One would think," said he, "that she had an argosy of lovers at sea, uninsured." "You gentlemen," replied Rosamond, "imagine that ladies are always thinking of lovers." "Not always," said Godfrey; "only when they show themselves particularly disposed to humanity." "My humanity, on the present occasion, cannot even be suspected,"...
9) Leonora
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The plot of the novel centres on the newly married Leonora and her decision to bring back to England a woman who had been exiled to France. The woman, Olivia, is known as a "coquette," and her controversial behaviour with regard to her marriage had driven her to France, where she cultivated an aristocratic, "French" sensibility that exists apart from conventional morality.
10) Helen
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At its core, Helen is a novel about lying-not lies told in malice, but the self-destructive lies one tells to those one loves. The story of orphan Helen Stanley and her friend Lady Cecilia Clarendon, and the crumbling of Lady Cecilia's marriage, this compelling tale foreshadows later nineteenth-century novels of marital unrest and disaster.
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Excerpt: "Indeed, in all sciences the grand difficulty has been to ascertain facts-a difficulty which, in the science of education, peculiar circumstances conspire to increase. Here the objects of every experiment are so interesting that we cannot hold our minds indifferent to the result. Nor is it to be expected that many registers of experiments, successful and unsuccessful, should be kept, much less should be published, when we consider that the...
12) Popular Tales
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This engaging collection of stories, published in 1804, was intended not for polite society, but rather to inform and entertain everyday people. With her customary feel for character, lively dialogue, and straightforward style, Edgeworth pens tales that are as readable now as they were when first written. The selections include "Murad the Unlucky," "The Lottery," and "The Limerick Gloves."
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Excerpt: "Are you to be at Lady Clonbrony's gala next week?" said Lady Langdale to Mrs. Dareville, whilst they were waiting for their carriages in the crush-room of the opera-house. "Oh, yes! every body's to be there, I hear," replied Mrs. Dareville. "Your ladyship, of course?" "Why, I don't know; if I possibly can. Lady Clonbrony makes it such a point with me, that I believe I must look in upon her for a few minutes. They are going to a prodigious...
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Excerpt: "There is Helen in the lime-walk," said Mrs. Collingwood to her husband, as she looked out of the window. The slight figure of a young person in deep mourning appeared between the trees,-"How slowly she walks! She looks very unhappy!" "Yes," said Mr. Collingwood, with a sigh, "she is young to know sorrow, and to struggle with difficulties to which she is quite unsuited both by nature and by education, difficulties which no one could ever...
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Excerpt: "PREFACE The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so...
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Excerpt: "PREFACE. It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding. How much more difficult is it to construct stories suited to the early years of youth, and, at the same time, conformable to the complicate relations of modern society-fictions, that shall display examples of virtue, without initiating the young reader into the ways of vice-narratives, written in a style level to his...
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Excerpt: "PREFACE. Some author says, that a good book needs no apology; and, as a preface is usually an apology, a book enters into the world with a better grace without one. I, however, appeal to those readers who are not gluttons, but epicures, in literature, whether they do not wish to see the bill of fare? I appeal to monthly critics, whether a preface that gives a view of the pretensions of the writer is not a good thing? The author may overvalue...
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Excerpt: "No less an event than Alfred's marriage, no event calling less imperatively upon her feelings, could have recovered Lady Jane's sympathy for Caroline. But Alfred Percy, who had been the restorer of her fortune, her friend in adversity, what pain it would give him to find her, at the moment when he might expect her congratulations, quarrelling with his sister-that sister, too, who had left her home, where she was so happy, and Hungerford...
20) Ennui
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The shiftless Lord Glenthorn has money and a title but suffers from ennui-from boredom. When it is revealed to him that he is not, in fact, an Anglo-Irish earl, but the peasant Christy O'Donoghoe, he must face his changed circumstances in order to provide for a life and future for the woman with whom he has fallen in love.
First published in 1809, Ennui is a didactic novel by Maria Edgeworth, who, along with Jane Austen, was a preeminent female novelist...