Castle Rackrent


"Castle Rackrent" was published anonymously in 1800. It was
not only the first of Miss Edgeworth's novels,--it is in many
respects her best work. Later came "The Absentee," "Belinda,"
"Helen," the "Tales of Fashionable Life," and the "Moral
Tales." Sir Walter Scott wrote that reading these stories of
Irish peasant life made him feel "that something might be
tempted for my own country of the same kind as that which Miss
Edgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland," something that
would procure for his own countrymen "sympathy for their
virtues and indulgence for their foibles." As a study of Irish
fidelity in the person of Old Thady, the steward who tells the
story of "Castle Rackrent," the book is a masterpiece.


_I.--Sir Patrick and Sir Murtagh_


Having, out of friendship for the family, undertaken to publish the
memoirs of the Rackrent family, I think it my duty to say a few words
concerning myself first. My real name is Thady Quirk, though in the
family I've always been known as "Honest Thady"; afterwards, I remember
to hear them calling me "Old Thady," and now I've come to "Poor Thady."
To look at me you would hardly think poor Thady was the father of
Attorney Quirk; he is a high gentleman, and having better than fifteen
hundred a year, landed estate, looks down upon honest Thady. But I wash
my hands of his doings, and as I lived so will I die, true and loyal to
the family.