Maria Edgeworth

Lord Colambre can see that his pretentious mother's social ambitions earn her nothing but contempt from London's fashionable society. And it's come to his attention that his father's finances have suffered a good deal underwriting his wife's extravagances. Anxious about his family's fortunes, Colambre departs Cambridge for Ireland to assess his father's estates firsthand. There he finds his absent father's tenants sorely put upon by the estate's agent....

Maria Edgeworth's Ormond tells the story of Harry Ormond, a destitute orphan sent to live with his guardian's wealthy cousin, King Corny, after his involvement in a nearly fatal shooting. Ormond travels to France, determined to raise his status and build his wealth, and encounters the country's complex political scene, which reflects sentiments similar to Ireland's revolutionary politics. Ormond was Edgeworth's attempt to show the difference in morality...

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Excerpt: "Mrs. Stanhope, a well-bred woman, accomplished in that branch of knowledge which is called the art of rising in the world, had, with but a small fortune, contrived to live in the highest company. She prided herself upon having established half a dozen nieces most happily, that is to say, upon having married them to men of fortunes far superior to their own. One niece still remained unmarried-Belinda Portman, of whom she was determined to...

Excerpt: "PREFACE. It has been somewhere said by Johnson, that merely to invent a story is no small effort of the human understanding. How much more difficult is it to construct stories suited to the early years of youth, and, at the same time, conformable to the complicate relations of modern society-fictions, that shall display examples of virtue, without initiating the young reader into the ways of vice-narratives, written in a style level to his...

¿Qué te queda por desear cuando ya lo tienes todo? El conde de Glenthorn fallece dejando a su heredero su título y una enorme fortuna. El joven conde se entrega sin medida a las diversiones y vicios de moda pero, incluso mientras disfruta de todos ellos, se siente permanentemente insatisfecho sin saber por qué. Es víctima del ennui, un hastío que sobreviene a quien lo tiene todo. Sin embargo, la visita de la nodriza irlandesa que lo crio hace...

Excerpt: "No less an event than Alfred's marriage, no event calling less imperatively upon her feelings, could have recovered Lady Jane's sympathy for Caroline. But Alfred Percy, who had been the restorer of her fortune, her friend in adversity, what pain it would give him to find her, at the moment when he might expect her congratulations, quarrelling with his sister-that sister, too, who had left her home, where she was so happy, and Hungerford...

Excerpt: "To be candid with you, my dear young friend, my secret reason for denying myself the pleasure of Tuesday's fête is, that I have just heard that there is a shocking chicken-pox in the village near you; and I confess it is one of my weaknesses to dread even the bare rumour of such a thing, on account of my Amelia: but I should not wish to have this mentioned in your house, because you must be sensible your father would think it an idle womanish...