Transcribed from the 1891 Cassell & Company edition by David Price, [email protected]
MURAD THE UNLUCKY AND OTHER TALES
Contents:
IntroductionMurad the UnluckyThe Limerick GlovesMadame de Fleury
INTRODUCTION
Maria Edgeworth came of a lively family which had settled in Ireland inthe latter part of the sixteenth century. Her father at the age of five-and-twenty inherited the family estates at Edgeworthstown in 1769. Hehad snatched an early marriage, which did not prove happy. He had alittle son, whom he was educating upon the principles set forth inRousseau's "Emile," and a daughter Maria, who was born on the 1st ofJanuary, 1767. He was then living at Hare Hatch, near Maidenhead. InMarch, 1773, his first wife died after giving birth to a daughter namedAnna. In July, 1773, he married again, Honora Sneyd, and went to live inIreland, taking with him his daughter Maria, who was then about six yearsold. Two years afterwards she was sent from Ireland to a school atDerby. In April, 1780, her father's second wife died, and advised himupon her death-bed to marry her sister Elizabeth. He married hisdeceased wife's sister on the next following Christmas Day. MariaEdgeworth was in that year removed to a school in London, and herholidays were often spent with her father's friend Thomas Day, the authorof "Sandford and Merton," an eccentric enthusiast who lived then atAnningsley, in Surrey.
Maria Edgeworth--always a little body--was conspicuous among herschoolfellows for quick wit, and was apt alike for study and invention.She was story-teller general to the community. In 1782, at the age offifteen, she left school and went home with her father and his thirdwife, who then settled finally at Edgeworthstown.
At Edgeworthstown Richard Lovell Edgeworth now became active in thedirect training of his children, in the improvement of his estate, and inschemes for the improvement of the country. His eldest daughter, Maria,showing skill with the pen, he made her more and more his companion andfellow-worker to good ends. She kept household accounts, had entrustedto her the whole education of a little brother, wrote stories on a slateand read them to the family, wiped them off when not approved, and copiedthem in ink if they proved popular with the home public. MissEdgeworth's first printed book was a plea for the education of women,"Letters to Literary Ladies," published in 1795, when her age was eight-and-twenty. Next year, 1796, working with her father, she produced thefirst volume of the "Parent's Assistant." In November, 1797, when MissEdgeworth's age was nearly thirty-one, her father, then aged fifty-three,lost his third wife, and he married a fourth in the following May. Thefourth wife, at first objected to, was young enough to be a companion andfriend, and between her and Maria Edgeworth a fast friendship came to beestablished. In the year of her father's fourth marriage Maria joinedhim in the production of two volumes on "Practical Education." Thenfollowed books for children, including "Harry and Lucy," which had beenbegun by her father years before in partnership with his second wife,when Thomas Day began writing "Sandford and Merton," with the originalintention that it should be worked in as a part of the whole scheme.
In the year 1800 Miss Edgeworth, thirty-three years old, began herindependent career as a novelist with "Castle Rackrent;" and from thattime on, work followed work in illustration of the power of a woman ofgenius to associate quick wit and quick feeling with sound sense and agood reason for speaking. Sir Walter Scott in his frank way declaredthat he received an impulse from Miss Edgeworth's example as astory-teller. In the general preface to his own final edition of theWaverley Novels he said that "Without being so presumptuous as to hope toemulate the rich humour, pathetic tenderness, and admirable tact, whichpervade the works of my accomplished friend, I felt that something mightbe attempted for my own country of the same kind with that which MissEdgeworth so fortunately achieved for Ireland--something which mightintroduce her natives to those of the sister kingdom in a more favourablelight than they had been placed hitherto, and tend to procure sympathyfor their virtues and indulgence for their foibles."
Of the three stories in this volume, who--"Murad the Unlucky" and "TheLimerick Gloves"--first appeared in three volumes of "Popular Tales,"which were first published in 1804, with a short introduction by MissEdgeworth's father. "Madame de Fleury" was written a few years later.
H. M.
Murad the Unlucky, and Other Tales Page 1