Murad the Unlucky and Other Tales | Page 3

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This etext was prepared by David Price, email [email protected]
from the 1891 Cassell and Company edition.

MURAD THE UNLUCKY AND OTHER TALES
by Maria Edgeworth

Contents:
Introduction Murad the Unlucky The Limerick Gloves Madame de
Fleury

INTRODUCTION

Maria Edgeworth came of a lively family which had settled in Ireland
in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Her father at the age of
five-and-twenty inherited the family estates at Edgeworths-town in
1769. He had snatched an early marriage, which did not prove happy.
He had a little son, whom he was educating upon the principles set
forth in Rousseau's "Emile," and a daughter Maria, who was born on
the 1st of January, 1767. He was then living at Hare Hatch, near
Maidenhead. In March, 1773, his first wife died after giving birth to a
daughter named Anna. In July, 1773, he married again, Honora Sneyd,
and went to live in Ireland, taking with him his daughter Maria, who
was then about six years old. Two years afterwards she was sent from
Ireland to a school at Derby. In April, 1780, her father's second wife
died, and advised him upon her death-bed to marry her sister Elizabeth.
He married his deceased wife's sister on the next following Christmas
Day. Maria Edgeworth was in that year removed to a school in London,
and her holidays were often spent with her father's friend Thomas Day,
the author of "Sandford and Merton," an eccentric enthusiast who lived
then at Anningsley, in Surrey.
Maria Edgeworth--always a little body--was conspicuous among her
schoolfellows for quick wit, and was apt alike for study and invention.

She was story-teller general to the community. In 1782, at the age of
fifteen, she left school and went home with her father and his third wife,
who then settled finally at Edgeworthstown.
At Edgeworthstown Richard Lovell Edgeworth now became active in
the direct training of his children, in the improvement of his estate, and
in schemes for the improvement of the country. His eldest daughter,
Maria, showing skill with the pen, he made her more and more his
companion and fellow-worker to good ends. She kept household
accounts, had entrusted to her the whole education of a little brother,
wrote stories on a slate and read them to the family, wiped them off
when not approved, and copied them in ink if they proved popular with
the home public. Miss Edgeworth'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 the first volume of the "Parent's Assistant." In
November, 1797, when Miss Edgeworth's age was nearly thirty-one,
her father, then aged fifty-three, lost his third wife, and he married a
fourth in the