Edgeworth, Maria. Frank : A Sequel to Frank in Early Lessons (3 volume set). London: Whittaker and Co., T. Tegg; &c., 1844. The Fifth Edition. [12088]
Three volumes in brown blind-stamped cloth, gilt titles and borders to spines, bindings are chipped at the spine ends and some edges, each 5 3/4 x 3 7/8 inches. xxii, 292; 312; 272 clean pp. Each with a private bookplate; a bit shaken. Fair. Hardcover.
The first edition (1822) is no. 767 in Sadlier, XIX Century Fiction: A Bibliographical Record.
Maria Edgeworth (1768-1849), b. Oxfordshire, England; c. Edgeworthstown, Co. Longford, Ireland. She "was an Anglo-Irish writer, known for her children's stories and for her novels of Irish life. She lived in England until 1782, when the family went to Edgeworthstown, County Longford, in midwestern Ireland, where Maria, then 15 and the eldest daughter, assisted her father in managing his estate. In this way she acquired the knowledge of rural economy and of the Irish peasantry that was to be the backbone of her novels." - Encyclopedia Britannica online. Her stories were admired by such luminaries as Sir Walter Scott and Jane Austin.
"Maria Edgeworth (1767-1849) has long been considered one of the most influential authors of children's books. F. J. Harvey Darton placed her on a pedestal, calling her 'one of the most natural story-tellers who ever wrote in English' (Children's Books in England, p.142). Others, sometimes using only slightly less hyperbole, have retained this reverence, congratulating her for bridging the gap between the supposedly dry, didactic children's literature of the eighteenth century and the livelier, more naturalistic books of the nineteenth." - The Hockliffe Project online.
