Maria Edgeworth

Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, and in 1782 moved with her family to her father's estate at Edgeworthstown, County Longford, where she lived for the rest of her life and, in her later years, managed the land herself. Her father, the inventor and educational reformer Richard Lovell Edgeworth, was her closest collaborator; together they published the treatise Practical Education (1798) before she brought out Castle Rackrent anonymously in 1800, putting her name to it only with its second edition in 1811. Belinda (1801), The Absentee (1812), Patronage (1814) and further tales followed. Walter Scott credited her directly in his preface to Waverley (1814) with having shown him what might be done for Scotland, having herself "so fortunately achieved" it for Ireland. She never married, and died at Edgeworthstown.