About this Item
Small quarto, v-vii, 179, [2], 287 pp, two volumes bound in one. Good; bound in contemporary leather with some surface marks to covers, label missing from spine, rubbing and wear to spine edges and corners; binding tight; text block clean; foxing to pages throughout; ex-library copy with usual markings, including a bookplate to front pastedown, institutional stamps to several pages, label on spine, and call number written in pencil. NOTE: Shelved in Room G. Maria Edgeworth (1768 - 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish novelist of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and was a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She was well-versed in estate management, politics, and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott. Edgeworth's work was often compared to that of Scott and Austen. She had been very close with her father throughout his several marriages (including to a woman one year younger than herself) and edited and expanded upon his memoirs with an affectionate and exacting preciseness. Jane Austen wrote to her niece in 1814, "I have made up my mind to like no novels really but Miss Edgeworth's, yours, and my own." Austen praises Edgeworth fervently in her so-called "Defense of the Novel" in Northanger Abbey: "And what are you reading, Miss-?" "Oh! It is only a novel!" replies the young lady, while she lays down her book with affected indifference, or momentary shame. "It is only Cecilia, or Camilla, or Belinda"; or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language." 1360941. Special Collections. Seller Inventory # 1360941
Contact seller
Report this item
Bibliographic Details
Title: MEMOIRS OF RICHARD LOVELL EDGEWORTH, ESQ., ...
Publisher: Wells and Lilly, Boston
Publication Date: 1821
Binding: Hardcover
Edition: First American Edition.
