Maria Edgeworth’s Fictional Fragments and Unreliable Narrators

Maria Edgeworth experimented with first-person unreliable narrators in her early fictions, including Julia from Letters for Literary Ladies (1795), Thady Quirk from Castle Rackrent (1800), and Lady Olivia from Leonora (1806). Her little-studied manuscript drafts of Harrington and “The life & death of a divorcèe” (both pre-1817), extend this work. Although both texts are unfinished, the extent to which their narrators are given an unfiltered viewpoint is a significant departure, especially given Edgeworth’s concerns with the instructional and emotional effects of novel reading. Their existence sheds new light on her difficulty incorporating new narrative voices while upholding her instructive aims.