Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth was born in Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, and, thanks to her father's support of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's progressive views, she benefitted from an unusually thorough education. Not surprisingly then, her first published work, Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), is a plea for a reform of women's education. In 1782, Edgeworth went to live on the family's estate at Edgeworthstown, near Longford, in Ireland. As her father's property manager, she became acquainted with the political, economic and social environment which fuelled her novels about Irish landlords and peasants and imbued Castle Rackrent (1800), Belinda (1801), and The Absentee (1812) with realism, humor, and freshness of style. Often considered the 'Irish Jane Austen' or the 'female Sir Walter Scott,' Edgeworth's writing in fact influenced both the former and the latter. She also wrote a number of didactic stories for children, including Moral Tales (1801). During her last years, Maria Edgeworth worked for the relief of peasants stricken by the Famine.