Sharon Murphy, Maria Edgeworth and Romance (Book Review‪)‬

Sharon Murphy, Maria Edgeworth and Romance. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2004. 208 pages. EUR 45.00. In the past decade, critical interest in Maria Edgeworth has grown significantly. Long seen as an inferior Jane Austen, the political turn in literary studies has led to an increasing concern with her patent involvement with the languages of colonialism, feminism, and educational theory. Her position as a 'mother of the novel' has been well established, and although clearly not in Austen's league in a literary sense, the range of her interests and the extent of her engagement with the public life of Ireland, England, and the Continent has made her work attractive to scholars interested in gauging the psychology of the Irish 'Protestant Ascendancy', tracing the impact of Enlightenment feminism, or determining the emergence and impact of regionalism on the novel form.