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Maria Edgeworth

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Maria Edgeworth portrait

‘I have made up my mind to like no novels really but Miss Edgeworth’s, yours, and my own’ — Jane Austen to her niece Anna Lefroy in 1814
It was Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849), not Jane Austen, whose works dominated the bestseller lists of the early nineteenth century. Maria was at the centre of a large, extended Anglo-Irish family whose story involves a vast cast of characters: four wives and mothers, 22 siblings and half-siblings, clutches of aunts and uncles. The place around which they gravitated was Edgeworthstown, the family home and estate in County Longford: the dynasty behind it was memorialised and mercilessly mocked in Maria’s most famous work, Castle Rackrent (1800).
In March 2019, a new project was launched between the Oxford English Faculty and the Bodleian Library, Opening the Edgeworth Papers - http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/archivesandmanuscripts/
The Bodleian Libraries hold a rich and varied collection of papers related to the Edgeworth family from the 17th to the 19th century. Only a tiny percentage of the material contained therein is available in print and even less has been subject to scholarly editing.
The collection may be little known, but it is of great significance, providing vital evidence (manuscript drafts and correspondence) about the literary career of one of the most important novelists of the early 19th century, Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849).
This page contains a video of a performance of an unpublished play by Maria Edgeworth and in the Essays and 'Other" section, documents relating to the surviving manuscript of this play and the performance.

# Title Description Contributor
1 Brighton Ambitious: Some Fragments, a play by Maria Edgeworth

A performance of the play, Brighton Ambitious: Some Fragments, by Maria Edgeworth.

Ellen B. Brewster, Ros Ballaster
# Essay Title Description Contributor
1 Exhibiting Maria Edgeworth and Her Fellow Literary Lions

There are three researchers responsible for ‘Opening the Edgeworth Papers’ from the Faculty of...

Ros Ballaster, Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull
2 Brighton Ambitious: Some Fragments

Brighton Ambitious: Some Fragments

an unpublished play by Maria...

Ellen B. Brewster, Ros Ballaster
3 Maria Edgeworth - A biographical note.

Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849).

A Biographical Note

Ros Ballaster
# Resource Title Description Contributor
1 A Play in Fragments by Maria Edgeworth - A Surviving Manuscript

The surviving manuscript of an unpublished play by Maria Edgeworth c.1811, found in MS Eng misc...

Ellen B. Brewster, Ros Ballaster