The Life and Letters of Maria Edgeworth, Volume 1

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 nothin...

My Dear Uncle--If you are going to the canal put this letter in your pocket, and do not be troubled in your conscience about reading it, but keep it till you are perfectly at le...

Thank my aunt and thank yourself for kind inquiries after _Letters for Literary Ladies._ [Footnote: Published in 1795--an early plea in favour of female education.] I am sorry t...

I do not like to pour out the gratitude I feel for your unremitting kindness to me, my dear Sophy, in vain thanks; but I may as well pour it out in words, as I shall probably ne...

Enclosed I send you a little sketch, which I traced from one my mother drew for her father, of the situation of the field of battle at Ballinamuck, it is about four miles from T...

I have been much interested by the _Letters from Lausanne_; I think them in some parts highly pathetic and eloquent, but as to the moral tendency of the book I cannot find it ou...

In the morning we went to see the Central School; it is in what was an old monastery, and the church belonging to it is filled with pictures collected from all the suppressed co...

Saturday we saw the magnificent Salle of the Corps Legislatif, and in the evening passed some hours in the agreeable society of Madame de Vergennes and her daughters. Sunday we...

We saw the grand Review the day before yesterday from a window that looked out on the court of the Louvre and Place de Carousal. Buonaparte rode down the lines on a fine white S...

Full of the pleasure I had received from the _Rosière de Salency_, I was impatient to pay a visit to Madame de Genlis. A few days afterwards we dined with Mr. and Mrs. Scotto, r...

I have been reading _a power_ of good books: _Montesquieu sur la Grandeur et Décadence des Romains_, which I recommend to you as a book you will admire, because it furnishes so...

Lady Wellesley was prevented by engagements from joining this party at Pakenham Hall; both the Duke and Duchess of Richmond are so fond of her as no tongue can tell. The Duke mu...

I have just been reading, for the fourth time, I believe, _The Simple Story_, which I intended this time to read as a critic, that I might write to Mrs. Inchbald about it; but I...

After a most delightful journey with Mr. and Mrs. Henry Hamilton, laughing, singing, and talking, we dined with them. [Footnote: Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton were paying a visit at Edg...

My mother will tell you the history of our night travels over the bad road between Leicester and Kettering; my father holding the lantern stuck up against one window, and my mot...

Yesterday I had a good hour in comfort to write to you before breakfast, which was scarcely ended when Mr. Wakefield came in with a letter from the Duke of Bedford, who is anxio...

We went to Coolure and had a pleasant day. _Waverley_ was in everybody's hands. The Admiral does not like it: the hero, he says, is such a shuffling fellow. While he was saying...

We are reading one of the most entertaining and interesting and NEW books I ever read in my life--Tully's _Residence in Tripoli_, written by the sister of the consul, who reside...

The newspapers have told you the dreadful catastrophe--the death, and the manner of the death, of that great and good man, Sir Samuel Romilly. My dearest mother, there seems no...

I rejoice that you and Sneyd are well enough to enjoy the pleasures of Paris. I do not know what Sneyd can have done to make Madame Recamier laugh; in my time she never went bey...

This despotic, laconic mode of insisting on learning everything in two words had its inconveniences. One day he asked the master of the woods at Fontainebleau, "How many acres o...

Yesterday William Everard went with us to the Chapelle Royale, where we saw Monsieur, the Duchesse d'Angoulême and all the court. In the evening we were at a _fete de village_ a...

We returned by the beautiful valley of Sallenches and St. Gervais to Geneva. I forgot to mention about a dozen cascades, one more beautiful than the other, and I thought of Ondi...

Visit to London: Madame de Staël, Davy, Byron, Miss Berry's, Lord Lansdowne, Lady Wellington, Mrs. Siddons, the Prince Regent, Lady Elizabeth Monk, Dukes of Kent and Sussex, Sir...