Maria Edgeworth

James Newcomer

1973
87 pages
ISBN 0-8387-7761-9
Irish Writers Series

Maria Edgeworth is another contribution to the Irish Writers Series. These monographs have been designed to treat in individual volumes the significant Anglo-Irish writers of the 19th and 20th centuries. When complete, the series will constitute a history of modern Irish literature since 1800. Its compact studies will provide an up-to-date and coordinated appraisal of more than 50 Irish writers, some of whom are being given full scholarly study for the first time.

Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) was a prolific novelist whom Sir Walter Scott called "one of the wonders of our age." First she published essays and illustrative stories for children; then, in 1800, came the novel for which she is best remembered, Castle Rackrent. By 1814, when she had published half her total literary output-Popular Tales, Belinda, The Modern Griselda, Tales of Fashionable Life in six volumes (including The Absentee), and Patronage- she was the Great Maria both in the British Isles and on the Continent. Her influence can be traced in English fiction from that time forward.

About the author:

James Newcomer, a native of Ohio, received degrees from Kenyon College, the University of Michigan, and the University of Iowa. He has always combined college and university administration with teaching. He wrote Maria Edgeworth while he was Vice Chancellor of Texas Christian University (until 1972), where he recently became the first Director of the TCU Press and Trustees Professor of English. Following the publication of his first monograph on Maria Edgeworth, Maria Edgeworth the Novelist, he researched Edgeworth material in Ireland, England, and Scotland in 1969 and 1971. He has published still a third monograph, and numerous essays, poetry, and fiction by him have appeared in periodicals.