Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Castle Rackrent
    Castle Rackrent
    Castle Rackrent
    Ebook121 pages2 hours

    Castle Rackrent

    By Maria Edgeworth

    3/5

    ()

    Switch to audiobook
    Read preview

    About this ebook

    When a long-time servant of the Rackrent family decides to write about family members whom he has served, the result is a stylishly entertaining exploration of master/servant relationships. Edgeworth's brilliant satire of early-19th-century Anglo-Irish landlords pioneered the regional novel and changed the focus of conflict in Ireland from religion to class.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateApr 9, 2013
    ISBN9780486149219
    Author

    Maria Edgeworth

    Although born in England in 1768, Maria Edgeworth was raised in Ireland from a young age after the death of her mother. After nearly losing her sight at age fourteen, Edgeworth was tutored at home by her father, helping to run their estate and taking charge of her younger siblings. Over the course of her life she collaborated and published books with her father, and produced many more of her own adult and children’s works, including such classics as Castle Rackrent, Patronage, Belinda, Ormond and The Absentee. Edgeworth spent her entire life on the family estate, but kept up friendships and correspondences with her contemporaries Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron, and her writing had a profound influence upon Jane Austen and William Makepeace Thackeray. Edgeworth was outspoken on the issues of poverty, women’s rights, and racial inequalities. During the beginnings of famine in Ireland, Edgeworth worked in relief and support of the sick and destitute. She died in 1849 at the age of 81.

    Read more from Maria Edgeworth

    Related to Castle Rackrent

    Related ebooks

    General Fiction For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Jan Morris

      Jun 15, 2018

      I have always rather envied the poet Ovid, who was banished from Rome by the emperor Augustus, you may remember, to a remote place called Tomis on the shores of the Black Sea. There he died, ten years later, and his exile has gone into legend and int

      17 min read

    • Article

      Re-Covered: The Mischief

      Dec 2, 2019

      Re-Covered: The Mischief
      8 min read

    • Article

      Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels

      Apr 22, 2022

      I think of this as a new literary form, a type of novelistic prose poem, a hybrid, a chimera, whose main currency is delight, wonder, and mystery. The post Fourteen First and Last Sentence Novels appeared first on The Millions.

      13 min read

    • Article

      What’s So Great About Jane?

      Mar 26, 2020

      What’s So Great About Jane?
      3 min read

    • Article

      Read a (Love) Letter From Herman Melville to Nathaniel Hawthorne

      Mar 16, 2017

      167 years ago today, Ticknor, Reed & Fields published The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne’s classic novel of repentance and slut-shaming. But actually, this isn’t about The Scarlet Letter—it’s about one of the most fascinating friendships in lite

      5 min read

    • Article

      Home From Home

      Jun 23, 2021

      Home From Home
      6 min read

    • Article

      A Special Relationship

      Mar 20, 2024

      A Special Relationship
      5 min read

    • Article

      Michael Wood On…

      Oct 26, 2023

      Michael Wood On…
      3 min read

    • Article

      They Were One-offs

      Apr 6, 2022

      HOW I wish I’d written this book! Matthew Kelly celebrates four women whose work created the organisations and attitudes to conservation we take for granted today. Two are well known, two are not; all their stories enrich us. The well-known two are O

      7 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Sep 8, 2021

      Great Read
      5 min read

    • Article

      Crazy For Cider

      Aug 25, 2021

      JAMES CROWDEN is a poet, shepherd and total cider nut. In this, at least his third book on the subject, there is no other drink but that it suffers from his passion for cider, apple brandy and cider’s delicate, sweet sister, perry—and almost no momen

      5 min read

    • Article

      Exceeding Expectations

      Nov 23, 2023

      Charles Dickens did not come from a privileged background, but nor were his parents without prospects. John Dickens (1785-1851), was the son of servants to the Crewe family - Cheshire gentry with a townhouse in Mayfair - whose patronage secured him a

      5 min read

    • Article

      City Of A Scandal

      Jan 4, 2023

      City Of A Scandal
      5 min read

    • Article

      The King Of Westminster

      May 24, 2023

      The King Of Westminster
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Sep 8, 2021

      Great Read
      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Aug 11, 2021

      Great Read
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Castle Rackrent

    3/5

    170 ratings12 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 3/5
      I was glad I read this because it has such a prominent place in literary history, but I did not find it as amusing as it is meant to be.
    • 4/5
      Published in 1800, Castle Rackrent is described in the introduction as one of the most famous unread novels in English. Also from the introduction, 'combining the subtle wit of the French tale, the Gaelic cadences of Irish oral tradition, and Gothic intrigue over property and inheritance, Castle Rackrent has gathered a dazzling array of firsts - the first regional novel, the first socio-historical novel, the first Irish novel, the first Big House novel, the first saga novel.'How all this could fit in 114 pages, which includes a preface and a glossary by the author, is pretty amazing. But on reflection I guess it does! I read this along with the glossary and explanatory notes - the glossary was so much more than a glossary, taking 3 pages to explain the Irish lamentation for the dead, a couple of pages on Fairy Mounts and explaining well and truly what a raking pot of tea is (raised eyebrows...). It's about four inhabitants of the Castle Rackrent, Sir Patrick, Sir Murtagh, Sir Kit and Sir Conolly and how the run their estate.I picked this up ostensibly to fit in a short 1001 book that also met the March RandomCAT and I'm so glad I did!
    • 3/5
      This was a novella of 89 pages about the Rackrents as told by Sir Condy's loyal servant, Thad or "Old Thady." This is hailed as the first British novel. I found the narrator to be unreliable and babbling. I found the the story boring and plotless.
    • 3/5
      Good book for identifying what the Big House lifestyle was like in Ireland around the end of the 19th century. The possibility for Honest Thady to be telling a slave narrative is very appealing although there are clear differences in some of the claims that it fits neatly in this category. Recommended read for anyone curious about Irish history.
    • 4/5
      Thady Quirk, aged retainer of the Rackrent family, recounts the family history in typically Irish style. The Quirk family's association began with Sir Patrick O'Shaughlin, who changed his name to Rackrent as a condition of inheritance from a childless cousin. The story concludes with the last of the Rackrents, Sir Conolly, and his loss of the estate. Edgeworth had an ear for dialect. Unfortunately, the flow of Thady's story is interrupted by footnotes and endnotes. Even the footnotes have footnotes.Edgeworth was a contemporary of Jane Austen. Austen referred to Edgeworth's novels in her own novels. Readers who have read their way through Austen's novels might enjoy branching out into works by an author that Austen herself read.
    • 3/5
      Good book, if you want an introduction to Irish Studies and literature. However, I got bored with stereotypical 2-dimensional characters and social classes - the rich are too pompous, the poors too servile and silly - there are so many 'Your Honour's honour' (feel free to count them), that the whole thing becomes comical to the extreme. Truly, the loss of Irish catholic landowners is no laughing matter, and wasn't then either, but Edgeworth's book did not serve the cause. Instead, I think it contributed to a certain point of view of the Irish as poor, lowly beggars or thieves, well into the nineteenth or twentieth century. To be read, surel, but with a bit of distance and a big pinch of salt as to the narrative and authorial intention.
    • 3/5
      I skipped the lengthy introduction (~25% of this Kindle book!). I wonder whether Susanna Clarke (author of "Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell") was a fan of this classic because Edgeworth's glossary and Clarke's footnotes were similar in style!I found many of the anecdotes amusing but the final story about Sir Condy struck me as rather sad.
    • 4/5
      Found the dynamics of interaction between the tenants, servants and gentry to be fascinating. A fast easy read.
    • 3/5
      This was a novella of 89 pages about the Rackrents as told by Sir Condy's loyal servant, Thad or "Old Thady." This is hailed as the first British novel. I found the narrator to be unreliable and babbling. I found the the story boring and plotless.
    • 3/5
      Late 18th-century satire on British landlords in Ireland, supposedly written by a trusted longtime servant. Edgeworth paints an intriguing portrait fo corruption and its effects on both the haves and have-nots.
    • 3/5
      I'm going to start off this review by saying I was forced to read this book for a class, which is never the best way to find books you like.That said, Castle Rackrent wasn't too bad. It was more boring than anything else. The book is being told as if Thady, the Rackrent's butler (for lack of a better word) were narrating to you out loud the history of the family. You go through four generations of Rackrents and learn about their good points and their bad, how some were good people but weak-minded and how one locked up his wife for eight years because she wouldn't give him her diamond necklace.That's about it. An okay story, but it just seems there wasn't a point to it. I can appreciate what this did for literature as a whole, being the first Anglo-Irish novel and whatnot, and there were some very funny parts, especially the names of places (such as Crookaghnawaturgh, Gruneaghoolaghan, and Allballycarricko'shaughlin, to name a few) but I doubt I would have read it if it wasn't for a class and I doubt I'll read it ever again.
    • 3/5
      The story of a dissolute family and the faithful retainer, as told by the faithful retainer, was not as entertaining as it may sound. For the record, I read the digital.library,upenn download of this novel, but I liked this cover.

    Book preview

    Castle Rackrent - Maria Edgeworth

    Bibliographical Note

    This Dover edition, first published in 2005, is an unabridged republication of the work as originally published by Baldwin & Cradock, London, in 1832–33, as part of the eighteen-volume set of Maria Edgeworth’s Tales and Novels. The Introductory Note was excerpted from Brander Matthews’ Introduction to Castle Rackrent and The Absentee (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., 1910).

    9780486149219

    Manufactured in the United States of America

    Dover Publications, Inc., 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola, N.Y. 11501

    Table of Contents

    Title Page

    Bibliographical Note

    Copyright Page

    Introductory Note

    Author’s Preface

    Castle Rackrent

    Continuation of the Memoirs of the Rackrent Family

    Glossary

    Introductory Note

    ¹

    BY BRANDER MATTHEWS

    MARIA EDGEWORTH was born on the first day of January, 1767; and she died on the twenty-second of May, 1849. There were granted to her more than eight-two years of useful and happy life.

    In her fourscore years she was a silent witness of the American revolution, of the French revolution, of the rise and fall of Napoleon, and of the suppressed revolts of 1848. She saw the beginnings of the romanticist movement in literature, and she survived to behold the solid foundation of modern realism laid by Balzac. In the year of her birth, Sterne published the ninth and final volume of Tristam Shandy; and in the year of her death, Dickens began to issue David Copperfield and Thackeray to send forth the successive parts of Pendennis. She was a living bridge from the eighteenth century to the nineteenth. It was a tumultuous spectacle that passed before her serene gaze; and she looked at this shifting panorama of human life with shrewd understanding and humorous toleration, as keenly interested at the end as she had been at the beginning.

    Her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth (born in 1744 and dying in 1817), was a man of remarkable individuality. He was the owner of a large estate in Ireland, at Edgeworthstown, and his ownership extended over Pallasmore (where Goldsmith had been born in 1728). Mr. Edgeworth was inventive, but too far in advance of his time to see his suggestions adopted in his own lifetime. He had early been taken captive by Rousseau’s theories on education as set forth in Emile; and he still commands respect as an early educational reformer in England. He was a member of the Irish parliament which voted the Union; and it was characteristic of his intellectual independence that, after making a speech in favour of the Union, he unexpectedly voted against it—an act which perhaps cost him a peerage. He was an admirable landlord, beloved by his tenants, toward whom he was as firm as he was encouraging. Near the end of his life he declared that he was not a man of prejudices: I have had four wives. The second and third were sisters, and I was in love with the second in the lifetime of the first. By these four wives he had nineteen children, thereby supplying himself with abundant material for the practice of his principles of education.

    Maria was the eldest child, the first of the four he had by his first wife. She resided with her aunts until her mother’s death. Four months later her father married the beautiful Honora Sneyd, with whom he had long been in love; and he then took his bride and children over to Ireland, where his home was to be for the rest of his long life. He had had a Welsh ancestress, from whom Maria may have derived something of her Celtic imaginative sympathy, as she may have inherited her turn for sentiment from her mother, who was German by descent. She was only six or seven when she was first taken to Ireland; and although she was sent to school in England for a little while when the family had to return to England temporarily because of the failing health of the second Mrs. Edgeworth, she went back to Ireland again in 1782, when she was only fifteen, after her father had buried Honora Sneyd and married a sister, Elizabeth, at the request of the dying Honora.

    It was in her impressionable youth that Maria Edgeworth gained her intimate acquaintance with Ireland and with the Irish; and it is in the memories of this plastic period that she was to find the material for those later stories which now keep her name alive. Her father employed her to write his business letters; and he had her with him when he received his tenants and listened to their pleas.

    Many of the masterpieces of fiction are the direct result of this utilisation of youthful experiences unconsciously assimilated. The David Copperfield of Dickens, the Pendennis of Thackeray, the Huckleberry Finn of Mark Twain, have all of them the richness of tone and the accent of veracity which are evident also in Castle Rackrent and in the Absentee. Maria Edgeworth was to transmute into fiction her father’s theories of education, and she was to win fleeting success as a novelist of fashionable life in London; but it is by her imaginative reproduction of Irish character, sustained by this early intimacy and vivified by enduring appreciation, that she has established her fame upon its solid foundation.... Castle Rackrent and the Absentee abide; they are not only tales with an unfading charm, but also human documents of unimpaired value....

    It was not until 1795, when she was twenty-eight, that she published her first book, Letters to Literary Ladies, a plea for the education of women, inspired by her father, who was in advance of his time in urging that the opportunity for culture should be offered to girls as well as to boys. Three years later, Practical Education was issued with the names of both the father and the daughter on the title page....

    After Miss Edgeworth had once tasted ink, and after she had savoured the pleasure of popular appreciation, the pen was rarely allowed to fall from her hand; and for nearly two-score years she proved herself to be possessed of that abundant productivity which is evidence of literary affluence. Castle Rackrent was issued in 1800 without her name, although this was disclosed in the second edition which followed at no long interval. A year later she put forth a collection of Moral Tales, to which her father contributed a needless and needlessly inflated preface. It was followed in the same year (1801) by the first of her longer novels of fashionable life, Belinda, a story now dropping out of memory, like most of her other tales of social ambition and of social achievement....

    [Edgeworth] retained to the end of her life her interest in ideas, in things, and in persons—especially in persons. The gift for friendship survived unimpaired to the end; and she had attained almost to threescore years and ten when she received a visit from George Ticknor and his wife, who won their way immediately into her affection and to whom many of the pleasantest of her later letters are addressed. When she was almost eighty she was a spectator of all the miseries of the famine of 1846; and, despite her many years, she was untiring in her efforts to relieve the distress which she saw all about her. Three years later she passed away, having survived almost to the end of the first half of the nineteenth century....

    Castle Rackrent is apparently the first in point of time of all Irish stories; and to this day it remains the first in point of merit. . . . In less than a hundred pages she has sounded the depths of the Irish character which she knew so well and appreciated so keenly. She makes us see for ourselves the wit and the humour of the Irish, their shortsightedness and their irresponsibility, their clannishness and their loyalty. She sets before us the Irish as they are—or at least as they were in the final years of the eighteenth century. She shows us the racial characteristics actually at work. Her method is very modern in its unflinching realism; but veracious as this realism is, searching as it is, it is never harsh or hostile. It is with love and with loving kindness that she evokes these native types and sets them in motion before us, so that they may reveal themselves amply and unhesitatingly....

    There is one inexorable test by which we can gauge the abiding value of an author’s work; this is the measuring of the range and of the depth of the influence it has exerted upon later writers. Excepting only the great masters of fiction—with whom Miss Edgeworth need not be classed—few can withstand the this test as triumphantly as she does. Scott was proud to acknowledge that he had followed in her footsteps; and Cooper, who trod the trail blazed by Scott, owed her a debt at least for Betty Flanagan in The Spy—a humorous character which Miss Edgeworth cordially appreciated, declaring that it could not have been better drawn by an Irish pen. . . . Thackeray borrowed more than one hint from Castle Rackrent for use in Barry Lyndon, which is perhaps the most vigorously artistic of all his stories. Nor was her influence confined to writers of her own tongue. Turgenev, for example, is on record with the confession that it was her treatment of the Irish peasantry which first opened his eyes to the possibility of a similar presentation of the Russian labourer; and the Memoirs of a Sportsman was the exciting cause of the abolition of serfdom.

    Sooner or later, no doubt, some novelist would surely have been moved to deal sympathetically with life among the lowly, since it was impossible that fiction should always maintain its early attitude of aristocratic condescension toward the plain people. Yet it is to Miss Edgeworth’s everlasting credit that it was she who was actually the first to renounce this remote superiority and to take a truly democratic view of the despised tillers of the soil, bringing these humble folks, too long ignored, within the radius of appreciative understanding.

    Author’s Preface

    The prevailing taste of the public for anecdote has been censured and ridiculed by critics who aspire to the character of superior wisdom; but if we consider it in a proper point of view, this taste is an incontestable proof of the good sense and profoundly philosophic temper of the present times. Of the numbers who study, or at least who read history, how few derive any advantage from their labours! The heroes of history are so decked out by the fine fancy of the professed historian; they talk in such measured prose, and act from such sublime or such diabolical motives, that few have sufficient taste, wickedness, or heroism, to sympathise in their fate. Besides, there is much uncertainty even in the best authenticated ancient or modern histories; and that love of truth, which in some minds is innate and immutable, necessarily leads to a love of secret memoirs and private anecdotes. We

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1