THE LIFE AND LETTERS OF

MARIA EDGEWORTH

VOL. I

Edited By

AUGUSTUS J.C. HARE







PREFACE


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
valuable, not only as a record of her times, and of many who were
prominent figures in them: but from the picture they naturally give of a
simple, honest, generous, high-minded character, filled from youth to
age with love and goodwill to her fellow-creatures, and a desire for