Reassessing Maria Edgeworth and the significance of literature for children

This episode of New Work in Intellectual History provides an in-depth introduction into the life and work of Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849), a bestselling Irish writer of adult and children’s literature. In the interview, Susan retraces her research journey for her forthcoming political biography of Maria Edgeworth. She goes into detail about the challenges of condensing Edgeworth’s literary and political life into different chapters and how her work contributes to a new assessment of Edgeworth’s intellectual and political life. The interview concludes with an outlook on Susan’s upcoming research on Romantic-period writing for and about children, highlighting the transformative potential of children’s literature in the history of ideas. 

Dr Susan Manly is a researcher at the School of English at the University of St Andrews. Her work focusses on Romantic-period Irish and English literature, and primarily on writing published in the 1790s.