The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth Volume 1

Excerpt: "In her later years Miss Edgeworth was often asked to write a biographical preface to her novels. She refused. "As a woman," she said, "my life, wholly domestic, can offer nothing of interest to the public." Incidents indeed, in that quiet happy home existence, there were none to narrate, nothing but the ordinary joys and sorrows which attend every human life. Yet the letters of one so clear-sighted and sagacious—one whom Macaulay considered to be the second woman of her age—are va...