Лучшие книги Maria Edgeworth

Мария Эджворт написала немало повестей, романов и рассказов, однако наивысшим ее достижением, несомненно, являются ирландские романы, а среди них, в первую очередь, "Замок Рэкрент" (1800) и "Вдали отечества", в качестве приложения в сборник включена переписка Марии Эджворт и Вальтера Скотта.
Перевод, статья и примечания Н.М.Демуровой и И.М.Бернштейн.

During the 1790s, with Ireland in political crisis, Maria Edgeworth made a surprisingly rebellious choice: in Castle Rackrent, her first novel, she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the decline of a family from her own Anglo-Irish class. Castle Rackrent's narrator, Thady Quirk, gives us four generations of Rackrent heirs - Sir Patrick, the dissipated spendthrift; Sir Murtagh, the litigating fiend; Sir Kit, the brutal husband and gambling absentee; and Sir Condy, the lovable and improvident dupe of Thady's own son, Jason.

With this satire on Anglo-Irish landlords Edgeworth pioneered the regional novel and inspired Sir Walter Scott's Waverly (1814). She also changed the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class and boldly predicted the rise of the Irish Catholic Bourgeoisie.

Written in 1834, the last and most psychologically powerful novel by Jane Austen's leading rival.
Newly orphaned Helen Stanley is urged to share the home of her childhood friend Lady Cecilia. This charming socialite, however, is withholding secrets and soon Helen is drawn into a web of 'white lies' and evasions that threaten not only her hopes for marriage but her very place in society.
A fascinating panorama of Britain's

Lord Colambre, the sensitive hero of the novel, finds that his mother Lady Clonbrony's attempts to buy her way into the high society of London are only ridiculed, while his father, Lord Clonbrony, is in serious debt as a result of his wife's lifestyle. Colambre travels incognito to Ireland to see the country that he still considers his home. When he returns to London he assists his father to pay off the debts, on condition that the Clonbrony family return to live in Ireland. Maria Edgeworth (1 January 1768 - 22 May 1849) was a prolific Anglo-Irish writer 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 held advanced views, for a woman of her time, on estate management, politics and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo.

Maria Edgeworth won the admiration of her contemporary Jane Austen, as well as later writers such as Thackeray and Turgenev, and in Belinda (1801) she tackles issues of gender and race in a manner at once comic and thought-provoking. Braving the perils of the marriage market, Belinda learns to think for herself as the examples of her friends prove singularly unreliable.

Edgeworth's varied cast includes the bewitching aristocrat, Lady Delacour, whose dreadful secret puts her in the power of her volatile servant; the dashing Creole gentleman, Mr Vincent who almost succeeds in winning Belinda's hand if not her heart; the eccentric Clarence Hervey, whose attempts to create an ideal wife backfire; and the outrageous Harriet Freke, whose antics as social outlaw land her in a mantrap.

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 (1802) also confronts the difficult and fascinating issues of racism and mixed marriage, which Edgeworth toned down in later editions.

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

"Practical Education" is an educational treatise written by Maria Edgeworth and her father Richard Lovell Edgeworth. It is a comprehensive theory of education that combines the ideas of philosophers John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as well as of educational writers such as Thomas Day, William Godwin, Joseph Priestley, and Catharine Macaulay. The Edgeworths' theory of education was based on the premise that a child's early experiences are formative and that the associations they form early in life are long-lasting. They also encourage hands-on learning and include suggestions of «experiments» that children can perform and learn fun. In Edgeworths' work, the attention of the child appears as a key site for pedagogical work and interventions. Following Locke's emphasis on the importance of concrete language over abstract, the Edgeworths' argued that words should clearly indicate «distinct ideas». This contributed to what Romanticist Alan Richardson calls «their controversial positions», including their resistance to reading fairy tales to children or discussing religion with them. Contents: Toys Tasks On Attention Servants Acquaintance On Temper On Obedience On Truth On Rewards and Punishments On Sympathy and Sensibility On Vanity, Pride, and Ambition Books On Grammar and Classical Literature On Geography and Chronology On Arithmetic Geometry On Mechanics Chemistry On Public and Private Education On Female Accomplishments, &c. Memory and Invention Taste and Imagination Wit and Judgment Prudence and Economy Summary Notes, containing Conversations and Anecdotes of Children &t;br/&t; &t;br/&t; &t;br/&t;

Patronage was among the first novels with a thesis and as such, it opened the way for Sir Walter Scott's historical novels.In the novel, Edgeworth focuses on and scrupulously explores the various types of patronage and the many forms it takes in all strata of English society. Despite the rigor of her analysis, Edgeworth obtains a sense of subtlety through her ingenious use of variations in characterizations and a well diversified plot. The plot is made up of many incidents, great and small, that take the reader through a wide range of situations. Much like her contemporary, Jane Austen, Edgeworth had a gift for conveying social conventions through brilliant dialogue and acute moral observations.