Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Maria Edgeworth
-
Standard Name: Edgeworth, Maria
Birth Name: Maria Edgeworth
Pseudonym: M. E.
Pseudonym: M. R. I. A.
ME
wrote, during the late eighteenth century and especially the early nineteenth century, long and short fiction for adults and children, as well as works about the theory and practice of pedagogy. Her reputation as an Irish writer, and as the inventor of the regional novel, has never waned; it was long before she became outmoded as a children's writer; her interest as a feminist writer is finally being explored.
She could read by four-and-a-half, and recalls an early admiration for hymns by Anna Letitia Barbauld
and Maria Edgeworth
. Julius Cæsar, the first Shakespearean
play that she saw, left a lasting impression. Later...
Education
Elizabeth Gaskell
Until the age of eleven, Elizabeth was taught at home by her Aunt Hannah Lumb
. As befitting the Unitarian emphasis on personal freedom and rationality, she read widely, and was encouraged to make her...
Influenced by her mother's linguistic virtuosity and her father's storytelling and love of classic literature, Rebecca grew up well acquainted with early American history (whose evidence lay close at hand) and with the stories...
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Sewell
Mary (Wright) Sewell
was a highly successful writer of didactic poetry and moral tales for children. Her sentimental ballad Mother's Last Words (1860), sold over one million copies. A follower of educators Richard Lovell Edgeworth
Family and Intimate relationships
Jemima Tautphoeus
The novelist Maria Edgeworth
was her cousin. JT
, who was forty when Edgeworth died, called her one of the most interesting people it was possible to know.
qtd. in
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Family and Intimate relationships
Anna Seward
She was nearly fourteen when the five-year-old Honora Sneyd
, whose mother was dead, came to live in the Seward household.
Ashmun, Margaret. The Singing Swan. Yale University Press; H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1931.
9-10
This early friendship was crucial to her. When Honora married Maria Edgeworth
's...
Family and Intimate relationships
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
They may have met on account of her praising his The Beauties of the Boyne (1849) in the Nation. The groom was eminent in his profession, having written the earliest textbooks in both his...
Family and Intimate relationships
Susanna Moodie
A son arrived in August 1834, named for his father but called Dunbar
. SM
had seven children in eleven years; all were difficult pregnancies and births. One of SM
's midwives (besides her sister
Family and Intimate relationships
Leonora Carrington
Like her mother, LC
took pride in her maternal family history and enjoyed her experiences with relatives, especially her grandmother Mary Monica Moorhead
. From her maternal grandmother LC
learned about their genealogical connection to...
Friends, Associates
Anna Letitia Barbauld
ALB
met Maria Edgeworth
, who was twenty-four years her junior. They spent time together at Clifton the following month, but Barbauld declined the Edgeworths' invitation to Ireland.
Le Breton, Anna Letitia. Memoir of Mrs. Barbauld, including Letters and Notices of her Family and Friends. George Bell and Sons, 1974.
84
McCarthy, William et al. “Introduction”. The Poems of Anna Letitia Barbauld, University of Georgia Press, 1994, p. xxi - xlvi.
xlv
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
