ABSTRACT
In the general preface to the collected Waverley Novels Scott mentions Maria Edgeworth’s Irish novels as one of the influences that caused him to take up the neglected manuscript of Waverley and turn novelist. The educator’s urge to use fiction for the moral improvement of mankind is evident in Maria Edgeworth’s Moral Tales and Popular Tales, but they are not therefore uninteresting, and she writes with wider social motives too. Yet Maria Edgeworth keeps returning to social problems that we can get more excited about. The Absentee traces Lord Colambre’s struggle between his love for Grace Nugent and a supposed impediment to marriage. History, politics, social problems and religious problems pack Maria Edgeworth’s books. Neither subtle psychology nor righteous reforming indignation is lacking. That material is insufficiently integrated in a total pattern is her main artistic deficiency.
