Ros Ballaster, Anna Louise Senkiw, Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull and Catriona Cannon

Researchers Professor Ros Ballaster, Anna Louise Senkiw, Ben Wilkinson-Turnbull and Catriona Cannon introduce 200-year-old letters and other items from the Bodleian Libraries’ collection of Edgeworth family papers that throw light on the life and work of early 19th-centuryAnglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth.

The Edgeworth papers are a rich and varied collection covering a period from the 17th to the 19th centuries. They reveal how an extended family with connections to Ireland, France, India and England communicated and worked on producing art, literature and scientific knowledge, and shed light on Anglo-Irish relations. This masterclass will focus on papers from spring 1820 and will look at the physical and intellectual shape of the correspondence. Maria Edgeworth was a writer of adult and children’s novels. She was one of the first realist writers of children’s literature, a significant figure in the evolution o0f the novel and a correspondent of the likes of Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo.

Ballaster is professor of 18th-century studies at the University of Oxford and academic lead of Opening the Edgeworth Papers. Sekiw and Wilkinson-Turnbull work as research assistants on Opening the Edgeworth Papers. Cannon is deputy librarian and keeper of special collections at Bodleian Libraries and co-investigator of Opening the Edgeworth Papers.

This event is part of the festival’s programme of Irish literature and culture.

Presented by Bodleian Libraries.