Maria Edgeworth

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Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth (born January 1, 1767 in Black Bourton , Oxfordshire , England , † May 22, 1849 in Edgeworthstown , Longford , Ireland ) was an Anglo-Irish writer .

Life

Maria Edgeworth was born in Oxfordshire to her grandparents' home. She spent most of her life in Ireland, on her father's country estate where she grew up as part of the Irish landed gentry, in the company of the families of Kitty Pakenham (later wife of Arthur Wellesley , 1st Duke of Wellington), Lady Moira, and her aunt, Margaret Ruston.

She took over the administration of her father's property, an experience that she later incorporated into her novels about the Irish. Her early efforts as a writer were less realistic and more melodramatic; one of her school girl novels features a villain as a character who wears the face stripped from a corpse as a mask.

In 1802 the Edgeworth family embarked on journeys, first to Brussels and later - during the brief rest period known as the Peace of Amiens in the Napoleonic Wars - to France. The family made the acquaintance of numerous prominent figures, and Maria received a marriage proposal from a Swedish count. After returning to Ireland, she began to write again.

Her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth , a noted author and inventor, encouraged his daughter's writing; however, he has been criticized for insisting on reviewing and editing their work. None of the stories published in The Parent's Assistant were allowed to be read to their siblings (her father had four wives and 22 children) until he had approved them. Castle Rackrent was written by her behind his back and published anonymously.

After the death of her father in 1817, she managed to publish his memoirs, which she expanded with biographical comments. She was active as a writer until her death and worked as much as possible to alleviate the suffering of the farmers who were afflicted by the Great Famine in Ireland (1845–1849).

Maria Edgeworth made no secret of the fact that there is a moral message behind all of her works, which usually reminds members of the upper class of their duties to their tenants. Her way of writing, however, met with concern from the religious leaders of the time. The preacher Robert Hall said:

I consider her works to be the most irreligious that I have ever read (...) she does not attack religion and does not oppose it, but it makes them seem superfluous by representing absolute virtue without them (...) No work ever produced had as bad an effect on my mind as hers.

Works

  • Letters for Literary Ladies (feminist essay), 1795; Second Edition, Revised, 1798 ( full text in the Digital Library's A Celebration of Women Writers project on the University of Pennsylvania pages )
  • The Parent's Assistant - 1796 (6 volumes)
  • Practical Education - 1798 (2 volumes in collaboration with her father)
  • Castle Rackrent. Novel, 1800
    • dt .: My high-born rule. German by Lore Krüger . Construction Verlag, Berlin 1981
    • German: Castle Rackrent. Novel. Translated from the English by Helga Schultz . dtv, Munich 1996
  • Early Lessons - 1801
  • Belinda - 1801 (novel)
  • Essay on Irish Bulls - 1802 (Political essay in collaboration with her father)
  • Popular Tales - 1804
  • The Modern Griselda - 1804
  • Moral Tales for Young People - 1805 (6 volumes)
  • Leonore - 1806 (written during the excursion in France)
  • Tales of Fashionable Life - 1809 (Part one, includes The Absentee )
  • Ennui - 1809 (novel)
  • The Absentee (1812)
  • Patronage - 1814 (four-volume novel)
  • Harrington, a tale - 1817
  • Ormond, a tale - 1817
  • Comic Dramas - 1817
  • Memoirs - 1820 (procurement of her father's memoirs)
  • Early Lessons - 1822 (sequels to some of the tales )
  • Helen. Roman, 1834

literature

  • Michaela Klinkow: On the relationship between fiction and reality. The female characters in Maria Edgeworth's Irish novels. Die Blaue Eule, Essen 1997 ("Neue Anglistik" series, Vol. 10), ISBN 978-3-89206-790-0 .

Web links

Commons : Maria Edgeworth  - Collection of images, videos and audio files