Miss More’s influence upon the character of Sunday-school books in England undoubtedly did much to incline many unknown American women of the nineteenth century to take up this class of books as their own field for religious effort and pecuniary profit.
Contemporary with Hannah More’s writings in the interest of religious life of Sunday-school scholars were some of the literary products of the painstaking pen of Maria Edgeworth.
Mention of Miss Edgeworth has already been made. About her stories for children criticism has played seriously, admiringly, and contemptuously. It is not the present purpose, however, to do other than to make clear her own aim, and to try to show the effect of her extremely moral tales upon her own generation of writers for American children. It is possible that she affected these authors more than the child audience for whom she wrote. Little ones have a wonderful faculty for seizing upon what suits them and leaving the remainder for their elders to discuss.
Maria Edgeworth’s life was a long one. Born in seventeen hundred and sixty-seven, when John Newbery’s books were at the height of their fame, she lived until eighteen hundred and forty-nine, when they were scarcely remembered; and now her own once popular tales have met a similar fate.
She was educated by a father filled with enthusiasm by the teachings of Rousseau and with advice from the platitudinous family friend, Thomas Day, author of “Sanford and Merton.” Only the truly genial nature and strong character of Miss Edgeworth prevented her genius from being altogether swamped by this incongruous combination. Fortunately, also, her busy practical home life allowed her sympathies full sway and counteracted many of the theories introduced by Mr. Edgeworth into his family circle. Successive stepmothers filled the Edgeworth nursery with children, for whom the devoted older sister planned and wrote the stories afterward published.
In seventeen hundred and ninety-one Maria Edgeworth, at her father’s suggestion, began to note down anecdotes of the children of the family, and later these were often used as copy to be criticised by the little ones themselves before they were turned over to the printer. Her father’s educational conversations with his family were often committed to paper, and these also furnished material from which Miss Edgeworth made it her object in life to interweave knowledge, amusement, and ethics. Indeed, it has been most aptly said that between the narrow banks of Richard Edgeworth’s theories “his daughter’s genius flowed through many volumes of amusement.”
Her first collection of tales was published under the title of “The Parent’s Assistant,” although Miss Edgeworth’s own choice of a name had been the less formidable one of “The Parent’s Friend.” Based upon her experience as eldest sister in a large and constantly increasing family, these tales necessarily struck many true notes and gave valuable hints to perplexed parents. In “The Parent’s Assistant” realities stalked full grown into the nursery as
“Every object in creation
Furnished hints for contemplation.”