Lifespan: 1767-1849
Nationality: English/Irish
Genres: Romantic Period
Types of Work: Novels, Children's Literature
Contemporaries: Jane Austen; Sir Walter Scott
Style: Stories usually relate a moral.
Bio: Maria Edgeworth was born January 1, 1768, in Oxfordshire, England to Richard and Anna Maria Edgeworth. Her mother died when Maria was just a child, and her father's second marriage took the family to their estate, Edgeworthstown, in County Longford, Ireland.
Maria was sent away to school until the age of 14, when she returned to Ireland to help care for her brothers and sisters (her father married 4 times, and produced 22 children) and manage her father's estates. Her experiences in Ireland later provided her with substance for her novels.
Her father, being a well-known author himself, encouraged Maria's literary career, but insisted on editing and approving her work before she could submit it for publication. Her first published work, Letters for Literary Ladies, appeared in 1795, and was followed by her first children's book, The Parent's Assistant. Castle Rackrent, her first novel, was published anonymously in 1800.
Maria was courted and proposed to by a Swedish courtier, Count Edelcrantz, but, for some reason, they seperated, and she was left broken-hearted. It was after this time that she wrote Tales of Fashionable Life, The Absentee, and Ormond, all novels about Irish life.
In 1813 and 1814, she met Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott, the latter of whom she began to correspond with and developed a life-long friendship.
Maria worked tirelessly towards the relief of the famine-stricken Irish peasants during the Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849. She died in Edgeworthstown on May 22, 1849.
Novels:
The Absentee
Belinda
Castle Rackrent
Harrington: A Tale
Ormond: A Tale
Helen
Rosamond: A Series of Tales
Tales and Novels (10 Volumes)
Patronage
Lenore
The Modern Griselda