WeRead Powered by ReaderPub
Maria Edgeworth cover

Maria Edgeworth

Chapter 32: FOOTNOTES:
Open in WeRead

Explore more books like this:

About This Book

The biography traces the subject's ancestry and family background, detailing formative domestic influences and a father's role in her education and pursuits. It follows her early years, girlhood and adult development, using private correspondence and an unpublished memoir to illuminate personal episodes. A substantial section analyzes her literary production, from children's books and practical-education essays to regional and moral tales and later popular novels. Other chapters narrate travels on the continent, periods at home and a notable visit to London, as well as the publication of a relation's memoirs. The book concludes with an appraisal of her later life and a measured assessment of her literary career.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] It was his habit, and that of his family, to drop all mention of the earlier marriage.

[2] Miss Edgeworth, in her father's Life, states that she was but twelve years old when she returned to Ireland. The date she gives, however, and that afterwards given by her stepmother, show that she must have been sixteen when the removal took place. It can, therefore, have been a mere lapsus calami on her part, as this eminently sensible woman was incapable of the silly weakness of concealing her age.

[3] Afterwards changed into Patronage.

[4] Afterwards Sir Humphrey Davy.

[5] Miss Edgeworth erroneously, but persistently, speaks of this publication as the Journal Britannique.

[6] A contemporary epigram ran thus:—

"La Genlis se consume en efforts superflus,
La vertu n'en veut pas; le vice n'en veut plus."

[7] Afterwards King Louis Philippe. It was at a Swiss school that he taught, not at a German university.

[8] John Langan was the steward; in face and figure the prototype of Thady in Castle Rackrent.

[9] It is but fair to add that Bulwer in a note disclaims the excessive severity and sweeping character of this criticism.

[10] She always refused to have her portrait taken, and all published so-called portraits of Maria Edgeworth are purely fancy productions.

[11] This anecdote, attributed by Miss Edgeworth to Mazarin, is told by De Retz, and is to be found in his memoirs.