Maria Edgeworth

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"...

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....

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...

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: "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...

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...

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...

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...

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,"...