Maria Edgeworth and her Circle in the Days of Buonaparte and Bourdon.  With numerous illustrations by Ellen G. Hill and Reproductions of Contemporary Portraits. London: Bodley Head, 1910. First Edition. A nice bright copy.

Inscribed jointly by Author and Illustrator.

Maria Edgeworth’s family had moved to Longford from England in 1782. By 1813 she was an established literary celebrity. Her four major Irish novels Castle Rackrent (1800), Ennui (1809), The Absentee (1812), Ormond (1817) turn on plots that test the legitimacy of Ascendancy land ownership.

Throughout her long life, she wrote across a variety of forms: essays and novels for adults as well as innovative educational books for what we would now call young adult audiences.