Patronage

MARIA EDGEWORTH

She set out to write an adventurous soap opera about the trails and fortunes of two neighbouring families in Regency England.

She ended with a searing critique of corruption within British public and private life and a rare insight into the opportunities available for young men making their way in society.

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) was the second child of Anglo-Irish Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a political liberal and enlightened educator. Her pioneering regional novels set in Ireland and sparkling comedies of high-life English manners, from Belinda (1801) to Patronage (1814) to Helen (1834), commanded unprecedented advances and were major best-sellers.

She was read and admired by Jane Austen, Walter Scott, Byron, Stendhal, Turgenev and Ruskin. She never married and lived, from age 14 until her death aged 81, at her father’s estate in Edgeworthstown in the Irish Midlands. John Mullan is a Professor of English at UCL. He hosts the Guardian Book Club, and contributes regularly to Newsnight Review, LRB and New Statesman. John Mullan will be available for interview or to write articles.

• Sort of Books are reviving a neglected classic.
• Maria Edgeworth is bound to appeal to all lovers of Jane Austen and the later 19th Century novels.
• Featured in The Guardian and BBC Radio 1 ‘Open Book’.

 ADVANCE QUOTE

"Admirable…instilling the love of justice and veracity." Jeremy Bentham

Price: £8.99
Format: B format paperback