Hilary Havens, associate professor of English, has received a $60,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) for The Maria Edgeworth Letters Project. The project is a collaborative digital edition of letters written by Maria Edgeworth, an Anglo-Irish author writing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Edgeworth was arguably the most commercially successful novelist of the Regency period in Britain. However, few of her letters have been published in comparison with those of her contemporaries and predecessors like Jane Austen and Horace Walpole.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Havens notes that \u201cMaria Edgeworth was a remarkable woman, and her letters reveal her interests in science, abolitionism, and Anglo-Irish politics. This project will lead to new perspectives on Edgeworth\u2019s accomplishments and on life during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century in Ireland and the United Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Edgeworth\u2019s work was diverse, including educational materials for parents, stories for children, pieces for both laboring-class and elite audiences, and novels. Her novels, set in Ireland, served as a critique of Anglo-Irish relations following the Irish Rebellion of 1798.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to providing important context to her work, Edgeworth\u2019s letters also add richness to existing narratives of key literary and historical figures, including Sir Walter Scott, William Wordsworth, and Elizabeth Inchbald. The letters span a series of critical historical events including the French invasion of Ireland, the Act of Union and its aftermath, and the great Irish famine. They also reveal Edgeworth\u2019s interest in nineteenth-century scientific discourse, as well as her modern opinions on issues of race and inclusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n