Maria Edgeworth

Castle Rackrent: A Norton Critical Edition - Norton Critical Editions Maria Edgeworth Critical edition

Marc Notes: Includes bibliographical references.; This edition includes material on the importance of Maria Edgeworth as a writer and the influence of contemporary history on this novel. Publisher Marketing: Castle Rackrent s publication in 1800 signaled many firsts: the first historical novel, the first regional novel in English, the first big house novel, the first Anglo-Irish novel, and the first novel with a narrator who is neither reliable nor part of the action. This Norton Critical Edition is based on the Baldwin & Cradock edition that appeared as part of an eighteen-volume collected edition titled Tales and Novels of Maria Edgeworth (1832 33). It is accompanied by detailed explanatory annotations. Ryan Twomey focuses the volume s Backgrounds and Contexts on Edgeworth s importance as a writer, the influence of contemporary historical events on her writing (most importantly, the Act of Union of 1800, which united Ireland and Great Britain), and Castle Rackrent s impact on the development of the novel. These include a selection of Edgeworth s letters; five major contemporary reviews; biographical pieces; Sir Walter Scott on Edgeworth and her response to him; and excerpts from Edgeworth s juvenilia, The Double Disguise. Criticism is thematically organized to give readers a clear sense of Castle Rackrent s major themes: Irish writing and specifically the Irish novel, narrative voices, patriarchy and paternalism, and Edgeworth s Hiberno-English writing. Contributors include Seamus Deane, Marilyn Butler, Katherine O Donnell, Julia Nash, Joyce Flynn, and Brian Hollingsworth, among others. A chronology of Edgeworth s life and work and a selected bibliography are also included." Review Citations:

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2006 pg. 279 (EAN 9780192835635, Paperback)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2010 pg. 196 (EAN 9780192835635, Paperback)

Wilson Fiction Catalog 01/01/2014 pg. 251 (EAN 9780192835635, Paperback)

Contributor Bio:  Edgeworth, Maria Although born in England in 1768, Maria Edgeworth was raised in Ireland from a young age after the death of her mother. After nearly losing her sight at age fourteen, Edgeworth was tutored at home by her father, helping to run their estate and taking charge of her younger siblings. Over the course of her life she collaborated and published books with her father, and produced many more of her own adult and children's works, including such classics as Castle Rackrent, Patronage, Belinda, Ormond and The Absentee. Edgeworth spent her entire life on the family estate, but kept up friendships and correspondences with her contemporaries Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, and her writing had a profound influence upon Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray. Edgeworth was outspoken on the issues of poverty, women's rights, and racial inequalities. During the beginnings of famine in Ireland, Edgeworth worked in relief and support of the sick and destitute. She died in 1849 at the age of 81. Contributor Bio:  Twomey, Ryan Ryan Twomey is Lecturer in English at Macquarie University. A University of New South Wales Ph. D., he is the author of "The Child Is Father of the Man" Importance of Juvenilia in the Development of the Author. He is co-editor of Maria Edgeworth's The Double Disguise and of William Harrison Ainsworth's The December Tales: A Selection.