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On a literary tour in 1813, Maria Edgeworth was recognized by literary celebrities in London and Paris as one of the most important authors in the English-speaking world. Her only rival in popularity was Sir Walter Scott, who credited Edgeworth's tales of Irish life for inspiring him to begin writing the Waverley novels. Her novels and tales were so popular that collected editions of her works appeared in her lifetime in England and the United States; her books for children have been reprinted in various forms and in many languages. Although she is seldom read today, literary historians are quick to acknowledge Edgeworth's influence on the development of the novel and short fiction. Ivan Turgenev, James Fenimore Cooper, and Jane Austen looked to Edgeworth as the originator of the regional novel. John Ruskin copied her children's stories. Austen sent Emma (1816) to Edgeworth upon its first appearance for her approval. In the twentieth century William Butler Yeats acclaimed her as the first serious novelist from the upper class in Ireland; indeed, the Anglo-Irish tradition began with Edgeworth's Castle Rackrent: An Hibernian Tale (1800).
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