SOURCE: "A Final Estimate," in Maria Edgeworth's Art of Prose Fiction, Mouton, 1971, pp. 227-38.

In the following essay, Harden assesses Edgeworth's strengths and weaknesses as a creative writer.

Throughout her long literary career, Miss Edgeworth never allowed herself to forget that the great end and aim of her writing was to make her readers substantially happier and better; to correct errors of opinion; and to remove those prejudices which endanger happiness. Sir Walter Scott described her writings as a "sort of essence of common sense", and the description is appropriate. Throughout her works, Miss Edgeworth sought to make wisdom and goodness attractive; she attempted to raise the humbler virtues to their proper importance by illustrating their effectiveness in everyday life, and she hoped to make the loftiest principles and intellectual attainments appealing and agreeable by uniting them with amiable manners and lively temperaments. No writer could propose a...