Biography:
Maria Edgeworth was born on New Year's Day 1767, the second of five children of Richard Lovell Edgeworth, in her paternal grandfather's home in Black Bourtan, Longford. Her mother died when Edgeworth was six, shortly after the birth of her last child, an infant who died young, and Edgeworth's only recollection of her was having been led into the sickroom to receive her mother's dying kiss.

The duty of "mother" fell on Miss Honora Sneyd, the first of Edgeworth's three stepmothers.  Edgeworth always strove to be a dutiful daughter, despite the stream of ever-younger stepmothers--the last of whom was actually younger than herself--which began only four months after the death of her mother and resulted in the births of 16 stepsiblings.

The death of her mother at this time brought Richard Edgeworth and his eldest daughter closer together. He wanted her to contribute something to the world (he himself was an  inventor, road builder, politician, educationalist and writer) . He was determined that Edgeworth would "have a tincture of every species of literature, and form a taste by choice and not by chance."

Maria Edgeworth's literary life began while she was at school in Derby, upon the receipt of an order from her father to send him a tale "about the length of a Spectator, on the subject of Generosity."   It was to be taken, so the order ran, "from History or Romance, and must be sent the day s'ennight after you receive this, and I beg you will take some pains about it." The same subject was also given to a "young gentleman from Oxford," who was visiting. Mr. Edgeworth's brother-in-law, Mr. Sneyd, was requested to decide upon the respective merits of the competitors, and he unhesitatingly pronounced in favor of Edgeworth's version. "An excellent story and extremely well written, but where's the Generosity?" was his pronouncement and Edgeworth used it thereafter as a sort of proverb.

In 1782, Edgeworth joined her father at Edgeworthstown and acted as his chief assistant and secretary in the management of his estates. It was there that she gained the intimate knowledge of Irish peasant life that formulated the backbone for many of her novels. She undertook the education of her brothers and sisters and the stories she wrote for them were later compiled as The Parents Assistant (1796).  Her father, ever watchful, forced Edgeworth to submit each story to him for his approval before he would allow her to read it aloud to her siblings.

Edgeworth's first publication was Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), a plea for the reform of woman's education. In it she expressed views which closely conformed to those held by her father. Her critics have claimed that much of her work was due to her father's influence, and it is argued that it was his influence which lent her works much of their moralizing tone. Her first novel Castle Rackrent was published in 1800 and was published anonymously--many say in order to avoid the scrupulous editing of her father. It was an immediate success.

In 1798, General Humbert landed in Kilalla, Co. Mayo, took Castlebar and marched for the Midlands. Edgeworth and her father went to Longford town with a corps of infantry to help to defend it against the French. After the news of the French defeat at Ballinamuck, the jubilant mob turned on Richard Edgeworth for suspected rebel sympathies and stoned him. After visiting the battlefield, Edgeworth and her father returned to Edgeworthstown to find windows in the house smashed but no other damage done.

By 1820 Maria Edgeworth's European reputation was secure, and when she paid her second visit to Paris in 1820 she was warmly received in literary and social circles.  Nevertheless after 1817 she wrote little;  she completed her father's "Memoirs" and from 1826 she was preoccupied with running the estate.  Her main literary work during this time was Helen which represents one of her first attempts to put a female politician into fictional literature.

Edgeworth never married despite being courted by the private secretary of the King of Sweden, M. Edelcrantz. It is clear from their letters that a marriage would have taken place had Edelcrantz been willing to leave his King and career to live in Ireland, or Edgeworth to leave Ireland.

In 1823, Edgeworth solidified a long-lasting correspondence by meeting Sir Walter Scott during a trip to Scotland.   In August, 1825, Scott visited Edgeworthstown and they toured the Goldsmith country, which was owned mainly by the Edgeworths. They also visited Pallas, where Oliver Goldsmith was born, (Edgeworth herself was born a short distance from where Goldsmith spent his last days in Oxfordshire).  Edgeworth again visited Scott and stayed at Abbotsford. A stone at Tyhmer's Waterfall bears the name "Edgeworth Stone" and it is said that she rested there. They became close friends and many biographers have suggested that, until their final parting in Dublin, he meant far more to her than the somewhat shadowy figure of Edelcrantz.

In 1845 the first signs of the famine appeared in Ireland. The Edgeworths did what they could to alleviate the suffering and Edgeworth ordered a large quantity of flour and rice sent over from Boston to give to the starving. The Edgeworths were not spared from the widespread hunger, and barely survived. Within two years Edgeworth herself died at the age of 82 on May 22, 1849.

Maria Edgeworth's books on the Irish people brought her world fame and the acclaim of such writers as Sir Walter Scott, Jane Austen, Byron and the Russian writer Turgenev.  Her realistic but fictional characters, combined with her sense, dignified peasantry and country life, were all new things in the literature of fiction.

Electronic Sources:
The Edgeworth Website has everything from a short biography of Maria and her father,to images related to the Edgeworths and town trivia.

On A Celebration of Women Writers you can read more about Edgeworth's life with the full text of Maria Edgeworth by Emily Lawless, as well as the he full text of Castle Rackrent.

To learn more about Irish history try Jaqueline Dana's resource page.

Study Questions:
As you read Castle Rackrent and think about the novel, here are some helpful hints to move you from just
summarizing the text to analyzing what it is all about.  If you understand these issues, you have a very good
understanding of the novel.

1.  What marks some characters as Irish and others as Anglo-Irish?  What is the difference?

2.  Is Thady a reliable narrator?  Why might one doubt his veracity?

3.  What is the purpose of the Glossary?  How does it affect the reader?

4.  Why does Part I cover several generations, while Part II concentrates on one?