[4] An able and certainly not over-enthusiastic estimate of Miss Edgeworth will be found in the Dublin Review, April, 1838, p. 495, sq.
⸺ WORKS, collected in eighteen Vols. 1832.
⸺ TALES AND MISCELLANEOUS PIECES. Nine Vols. (London). 1848.
These were received with a chorus of praise by critics, such as Lord Jeffery, Lord Dudley, and Sir James Mackintosh. Scott called them “a sort of essence of common sense.”
⸺ CASTLE RACKRENT. (Macmillan, &c.). (N.Y.: Pratt). 0.75. [1800].
A picture of the feudal gentry in the latter half of the seventeenth century, in the form of reminiscences by an old retainer of the glories of the family he had served. One after another, he tells the careers of his various masters, the wild waste and endless prodigality of one, the skinflint exactingness of another. There is no religious bias nor discussion of problems, the chief interest being the ingenuous and unquestioning devotion of the old servant and his quaint observations. The literary merits of the book are usually rated very high.
⸺ THE ABSENTEE. (Macmillan, &c.). (N.Y.: Pratt). 0.75. [1809].
A vivid impression of the Irish nobility trying to dazzle London society, and to prove itself more English than the English themselves, while the English great ladies mock at their parvenu extravagance and outlandish ways. The fine lady spends her days in social emulation, while her lord sinks to the company of toadies and hangers-on, until the conscience of the young heir is aroused by a tour in Ireland, and he brings the family back to their estates. The peasants are drawn purely in their relation of grateful and patient dependents.
⸺ ENNUI. [1809].
The Earl of Glenthorn, an English-bred absentee landlord, is afflicted with ennui. He determines to attempt a cure by a visit to Ireland, and the cure is effected in a very unlooked for way. The Author draws in an amusing and vivid way the contrast, as felt by Lord Glenthorn, between English tastes, prejudices, and decorum and the strange Irish ways, which surprise him at every turn.—(Krans).