Book Description
The only edition to use the 1802 text, this lively comedy challenges the conventions of courtship, examines questions of female independence, and exposes the limits of domesticity. The text used in this edition also confronts the difficult and fascinating issues of racism and mixed marriage, which Edgeworth toned down in later editions.Download Description
If I had served myself, with half the zeal that I have served the world, I should not now be thus forsaken!--I have sacrificed reputation, happiness--every thing, to the love of frolic--All frolic will soon be at an end with me--I am dying--and I shall die unlamented by any human being. --If I were to live my life over again, what a different life it should be!--What a different person I would be! --But it is all over now--I am dying. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

A joy to read
I started reading Belinda around 6pm and finally around 2:30am I decided that I had best go to bed and finish the book later.Well, 10 minutes later my light was back on and I stayed up until 6:30am finishing the book.Not even all of Jane Austen's work has done that to me!

The themes of gender and sexual attitudes, colonialism, religion, etc can easily be found in this work if you're interested in it for its scholarly value.However for the lay person it is a beautifully written, light read that is reminiscent of Austen's Mansfield Park or Sense and Sensibility (I certainly don't see many parallels to Pride and Prejudice as one reviewer did).If you're looking to go past Austen into early 19th century English literature, I would certainly recommend this book highly.

no Jane Austen...
I read the book based on reader recommendations that equated 'Belinda' with Jane Austen's work. I had high expectations but struggled to read the book to the end. I found the writing at certain points more like an essay than a novel. Her character development seems forced, and there is little ambient description. Those interested in tracing literary associations of Jane Austen should probably read the book, but if you've read all of Austen's work and are desperately looking for something 'similar' to her style and quality, I would recommend you look elsewhere.

A good read!
Why I never heard about this book until I stumbled upon it online, I will never know!This is as good as any Jane Austen novel, and should have a BBC film of it's own.

Feminism and colonialism
Besides this being as readable as Jane Austen, this book is witty and intelligent.It raises thought provoking questions about gender roles and transgression that suggest that Edgeworth was not an ordinary woman. Unfortunately, like many other 18th C. novels, the book ends with all theusual conventions intact.The women who cross dress (and the man whocross-dresses!) are returned to their spheres and/or married.Don't get mewrong though, this book is quite innovative.I don't know of many literarywomen having duels and stepping in iron traps that cut up their legs.Alsoparticularly interesting is Edgeworth's treatment of colonialism: there isa cross-racial marriage that is entirely sanctioned.And yet the thoughtof the heroine marrying a creole is not approved.It is much better forher to marry an Englishman in the parliament.This is a delightful bookthat would entertain romantics and scholars.I would like to think that Iam both, though.

A sloppy edition of an interesting book
Belinda is Edgeworth at her best -- full of social comment and satire, gender- and other kinds of politics. It's great to have this novel in print, as a companion and contrast to the very dominant Austen. But I have to say this edition needs reworking; not only are there typos, but the notes are very spotty. Example: one character plays an early form of roulette, called E.O.; do we get a note on social attitudes to new games of chance other than cards? No. Further example: a character goes to visit the Chevalier D'Eon. Do we get a note explaining that this is a real person -- a crossdressing swordfighting real person?!!!!! No. Shame, World's Classics! How can you expect people to keep reading the notes when they're no help? ... Read more

Book Description
An orphan, handsome Harry Ormond has been raised, with a mixture of indulgence and neglect, by the corrupt, hard-drinking Anglo-Irish politician, Sir Ulick O'Shane. When Ormond's hot temper involves him in a near-fatal shooting, he is sent away to live with King Corny, his guardian's kind-hearted, eccentric cousin. Possessing neither property nor fortune, Ormond is determined to make his way in the world like an Irish Tom Jones. Blending issues of moral development with questions about the shape of Ireland's political future, Maria Edgeworth emphasizes the importance of education and upbringing, as opposed to inheritance and lineage, in her tale of Harry Ormond. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

An Irish Waverly?
Edgeworth's Ormond is a great book, comparable to the best of Scott and Austen.In it, we follow the young Ormond from his wealthy adolescence with his uncle; a sojourn with another, more eccentric uncle in the Black Islands; to a grand tour of Paris before the revolution; and to his mature return to Ireland.The mirroring of political tensions in pre-revolutionary France with conflicts between Irish political factions are further complicated by Ormond's own allegiance to the English mililary.

This novel is more than a romance, more than a coming-of-age novel, and more than a historical novel.It possesses the same melange of styles one would expect from an heir of Sterne and Swift, and a progenitor of Le Fanu, Joyce, and Beckett.If you have read all of Austen and wonder what to read next, Ormond should be a delight.

A good 'Coming of Age' story
This is the story of Ormond, an orphan who is raised and influenced by several very different men.It is a reflective story, but not a slow-read.You learn how Ormond chooses his values and learns how to judge people based upon his own opinions and beliefs, not what others try to tell him.It is a good novel, worth reading, not necessarily a great "adventure" but more a life story about how a young boy grows up and becomes a man---one with morals, when those around him sometimes lack all morality. ... Read more

Book Description
With an Introduction by Anne Thackeray RitchieDownload Description
The author of the following Memoirs has upon these grounds fair claims to the public favour and attention; he was an illiterate old steward, whose partiality to the family, in which he was bred and born, must be obvious to the reader. He tells the history of the Rackrent family in his vernacular idiom, and in the full confidence that Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and Sir Condy Rackrent's affairs will be as interesting to all the world as they were to himself. Those who were acquainted with the manners of a certain class of the gentry of Ireland some years ago, will want no evidence of the truth of honest Thady's narrative: to those who are totally unacquainted with Ireland, the following Memoirs will perhaps be scarcely intelligible, or probably they may appear perfectly incredible. For the information of the ignorant English reader, a few notes have been subjoined by the editor, and he had it once in contemplation to translate the language of Thady into plain English; but Thady's idiom is incapable of translation, and, besides, the authenticity of his story would have been more exposed to doubt if it were not told in his own characteristic manner. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Unsettling Anglo-Irish Social Satire
Maria Edgeworth's "Castle Rackrent," published in 1800, the year of Irish union with Great Britain, and just two years after the 1798 Irish Rebellion, is supposedly a comic satire intended to show after years of unrest, that the Irish were civil enough to be assimilated into the British Empire.That is a deceptively simple description of a book in conflict with its author and itself.

Told to an "editor" by Thady Quirk, the 80+ year old steward of the Rackrent estate relates (very quickly) the story of the Rackrent family, Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit, and the absolutely dissolute Sir Condy.The O'Shaughlin family is forced by the Penal Laws to become Protestant and to change their name to Rackrent to regain their estate.The variously weak Rackrent men and their extremely strong and independent wives spend themselves into outrageous debt and tax their tenant farmers to the point of insanity over the course of the novel.

Apply Katie Trumpener's argument regarding the importance of the bog to Irish cultural nationalism in her book "Bardic Nationalism," and you begin to see that, all that seems to preserve the legacy of the O'Shaughlin family is their mucky bog, Allyballycarricko'shaughlin, and Thady Quirk, if he is to be trusted, himself seemingly stuck in a feudal past.

One of the major questions posed by Edgeworth's novel is "What is it to be Irish?"The Anglo-Irish Rackrent landlords claim an Irish Catholic heritage, but forfeit that personal history for the ephemeral run of the estate.The disenfranchised tenant farmers are forced to yield their produce to support the Rackrents's absurd behaviours.In the middle of this dynamic stand the novel's two most developed and challenging characters, Sir Condy Rackrent and Jason McQuirk, Thady's son.Raised in identical circumstances, these two seem to mark the novel's ultimate judgment on the future of Ireland.Is Condy the last of the feudal Irish aristocracy?Does Jason represent the model for the "British" assimilated Irishman?

Can outsiders even fathom Irishness?An almost comically unwieldy editorial apparatus, including a glossary and internal footnotes try to neutralize the foreignness and threat of the Irish for Edgeworth's intended British audience."Castle Rackrent" is indeed an ambivalent testament to the future of the Irish nation as it is swallowed up into the British Empire at the turn of the 19th century, and an intriguing read.

Boring, boring!
This book is simply boring.There are fun things to it, especially if you know your Irish history, but these out-of-date parodies are still not good enough to make it worth reading.Under the narrative of Thady Quirk, which is -- at least to me -- fairly hard to get through, we are taken through the history of a protestant landlord family. If you truly dissect the book, there are interesting sides of it, but just as a plain reading, I found it simply boring. It is short and doesn't go into any detailed description of the many events that are told to the reader/listener, it's value were supposedly the mocking of the protestant ruling class of Ireland. Since that value is lost to most contemporary readers, there isn't all that much left. ... Read more

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An examination of comedy and feminism in the works of early women British novelists. ... Read more

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scholarly but accessible feminist look at Austen et al.
I was anxious to read this book because I've always enjoyed 18th and 19th century literature, and believed that the humor found in the works of Austen and Burney were overlooked and undermentioned.Author Bilger examines the works of Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth and Jane Austen, and posits that the humor they used was subversive -- laughter at the expense of the overbearing patriarchal culture in which they lived.

While this isn't exactly what I'd hoped it would be, it was more accessible than many scholarly works, and after I got into the rhythm and jargon of the academic writing, I found myself entertained as well as informed -- such a lovely combination.

Laughter is a commodity too often ignored and a tool too often overlooked, but the author makes her case that these three authors consciously used satire, burlesque and parody to criticize their culture while maintaining the guise of docile co-conspirators.Bilger begins with interesting chapters on women & comedy and Mary Shelley's feminism before discussing the lives of her subjects, their beliefs and their use of comedic technique and characters to undermine the dominant paradigm, as it were.Naive observers, female tricksters, competitive women, nimcompoop suitors and ignorant patriarchs are described and then illustrated with short excerpts from the many works by these talented authors -- in particular Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Northanger Abbey; Burney's Camilla and The Wanderer; and Edgeworth's Belinda and Helen.

I thought the most interesting chapter was on "goblin humor", dark humor that is still considered distasteful by many and seems shocking when found in these quiet comedies of manners.Here the author displayed a mastery of comic theory as well as the literature, and made her case admirably, without descent into the jargon-laden victimization theory that dominates feminist film theory, for example.Rather, Bilger posits that Austen, Burney and Edgeworth found an outlet for what they could have considered a hopeless situation, and that they consciously and actively did their best to undermine the system in which they lived, reflecting and building upon the work of earlier feminists, and sending out beacons of camaraderie to women living under cultural and personal subjugation.

The book concludes with a fine Notes section, a bibliography and a good index. ... Read more

Book Description
Maria Edgeworth is largely read in literature studies classes today, but between 1800 and 1810, she was the best-recognized, and most popular novelist in the English-speaking world. A fine children's writer as well as a novelist, Maria was born in 1868 in Oxfordshire, of Anglo-Irish gentry. Greatly influenced by her powerful and genteel father, Maria was the second-oldest daughter of a family that eventually, after four marriages, grew to encompass twenty-two children. Maria's writings on the education of children were primarily composed to advance her father's ideas, only later becoming Maria's own. Perhaps best-known today for her short novel of Anglo-Irish landed gentry, Castle Rackrent, her novel Helen was a novel of "sensibility," telling the story of a simple, naturally-attractive and kind young woman, whose kindness and efforts to "save" her friends from certain trouble leads to trouble for Helen herself. Helen was Maria Edgeworth's penultimate novel, popular at its first publication in 1837. Readers of Jane Austen and other later British novelists of manners and customs will enjoy Maria Edgeworth, finding a writer of great sensitivity and insight into the human condition.Download Description
Why not? Beauclerc asked, "it was full as well worth having as many of the relics to be found in most young ladies' and even old gentlemen's museums. It was quite sufficient whether a man had been great or little that he had been talked of,--that he had been something of a lion--to make any thing belonging to him valuable to collectors, who preserve and worship even 'the parings of lions' claws.'" ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Burney is to Camilla as Edgworth is to Helen
The title of my review may not make sense to readers unfamiliar with the four novels of Frances Burney, nor a bit of biography about the two great women authors, Frances Burney and Maria Edgeworth. Both Burney's Camilla and Edgeworth's Helen are later works of fiction produced after earlier successes. Both were published after a long break in time in writing.Both are perhaps "overworked," and in reading both, I often think of how much anxiety the heroines exhibit, and I sense anxiety in the authors in themselves being expressed in subtle ways in text. Both texts have great strengths, yet if they are read after the greater works of the authors (Evelina, Cecilia, Belinda, Patronage, The Absentee, Ennui), there is a sad sense of lost compactness, lost power. Both Camilla and Helen are longer than they need be, and I suspect their length is the result of excessive rewriting and anxiety on the part of the two authors.

Yet having said that, I would argue that second-rate Edgeworth is superior to a great many authors' best efforts.Helen is at heart a story about friendship and betrayal, selflessness and selfishness, social lies and their cost.As usual, once I start to try to narrow down a theme of Edgeworth's, more and more lessons on life and great human issues emerge from her writing.Edgeworth understands people and the social games they play, and this perceptive power is still fresh and relevant in 2004.The role of women in politics, political intrigue, and power is an important theme in the book; here some women will struggle with Edgeworth's ambiguity and long for the absolute world of Mary Wollstonecraft.But Edgeworth tackles issues on a practical level-unlike Wollstonecraft she is not able to say, "This is how it should be,"but rather Edgeworth explores issues in social context. She shows us behavior and the diverse reactions of people in society, leads us to look at different values, different lifestyles. There is in all of Edgeworth's novels, a level of common sense and the way of the world that keeps her novels from becoming too didactic, too formulaic, too visionary, and too melodramatic.Just as things seem to become too serious, too moral, or (horrors!) boring, Edgeworth makes us laugh at the silly ways people try to protect or feed their vanity, self-esteem, or social reputation. ... Read more

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This volume is produced from digital images created through the University of Michigan University Library's preservation reformatting program. ... Read more

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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Lady Lansdowne's reception of us was most cordial. She had been out walking, and came to us only half dressed, with a shawl thrown over her. Lord Lansdowne is at Bath, at an agricultural meeting. Mr. and Mrs. Ord and their son, an Eton youth, are here; Lady Elizabeth and Captain Fielding--he is very gentlemanlike and agreeable; Mr. Hallam; the two Mr. Smiths, whom you remember, and Mr. Fazakerley--very clever; and best of all, Miss Vernon and Miss Fox: she introduced to Fanny and Harriet her niece, Miss Fox, very handsome and agreeable--not come out.Download Description
Lady Lansdowne's reception of us was most cordial. She had been out walking, and came to us only half dressed, with a shawl thrown over her. Lord Lansdowne is at Bath, at an agricultural meeting. Mr. and Mrs. Ord and their son, an Eton youth, are here; Lady Elizabeth and Captain Fielding--he is very gentlemanlike and agreeable; Mr. Hallam; the two Mr. Smiths, whom you remember, and Mr. Fazakerley--very clever; and best of all, Miss Vernon and Miss Fox: she introduced to Fanny and Harriet her niece, Miss Fox, very handsome and agreeable--not come out. ... Read more

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Edited by Augustus J.C. Hare, these letters date from 1820 to Maria's death in 1849 ... Read more

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Edited by Augustus J.C. Hare ... Read more

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Edited by Augustus J.C. Hare, these letters date from 1779 (when Maria was 12) to 1820 ... Read more

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Autobiography of the Anglo-Irish novelist who worked strenuously for the relief of Irish peasants. ... Read more

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Harrington (1817) is the personal narrative of a recovering anti-Semite, a young man whose phobia of Jews is instilled in early childhood and who must unlearn his irrational prejudice when he falls in love with the daughter of a Spanish Jew. In this novel, Edgeworth attempts to challenge prejudice and to show how literary representations affect public policy, while at the same time interrogating contemporary understandings of freedom in English society.

This Broadview edition includes a critical introduction and a judicious selection of appendices, including correspondence between Edgeworth and Rachel Mordecai Lazarus, excerpts from John Toland's Letters to Serena and Reasons for Naturalizing the Jews, an excerpt from Isaac D'Israeli's article on Moses Mendelssohn, and contemporary reviews of the novel. ... Read more