De Libris: Prose and Verse by Austin Dobson
page 52 of 141 (36%)
page 52 of 141 (36%)
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only for moral improvement, but to exercise the best affections of the
human heart." With one of the books mentioned by the _Monthly Review_--_Evenings at Home_--Miss Edgeworth was fully prepared, at all events as regards format, to associate herself. "The stories," she says in a letter to her cousin, Miss Sophy Ruxton, "are printed and bound the same size as _Evenings at Home_, and I am afraid you will dislike the title." Her father had sent the book to press as the _Parent's Friend_, a name no doubt suggested by the _Ami des Enfants_ of Berquin; but "Mr. Johnson [the publisher]," continues Miss Edgeworth, "has degraded it into _The Parent's Assistant_, which I dislike particularly, from association with an old book of arithmetic called The _Tutor's Assistant_." The ground of objection is not very formidable; but the _Parent's Assistant_ is certainly an infelicitous name. From some other of the author's letters we are able to trace the gradual growth of the work. Mr. Edgeworth, her father, an utilitarian of much restless energy, and many projects, was greatly interested in education,--or, as he would have termed it, practical education,--and long before this date, as early, indeed, as May 1780, he had desired his daughter, while she was still a girl at a London school, to write him a tale about the length of a _Spectator_; upon the topic of "Generosity," to be taken from history or romance. This was her first essay in fiction; and it was pronounced by the judge to whom it was submitted,--in competition with a rival production by a young gentleman from Oxford,--to be an excellent story, and extremely well written, although with this commendation was coupled the somewhat damaging inquiry,--"But where's the Generosity?" The question cannot be answered now, as the manuscript has not been preserved, though the inconvenient query, we are told, became a kind of personal proverb with the young author, who was wont to add that this first effort contained |
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