Maria Edgeworth, 1768 - 1849

The Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth wrote the first ‘Big House' novel - ‘Castle Rackrent'. Maria was very much influenced by her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth. On the family's Longford estate Richard was a liberal, reforming landlord who campaigned for Catholic emancipation. He also had a passion for education and began to educate Maria almost as an experiment. The father and daughter became a writing partnership – but it was the daughter who emerged as the more accomplished.

from BBC Ulser, the Book of Irish Writers:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/...

This is a quick read. However, I didn't like it that much. What annoyed me was all the specifics about money and accounting and the agreements made on these matters. What slows down the story are the very very long sentences that are used by the narrator. It does seem to get better towards the middle of the story though. Overall, there didn't seem to be much of a point to the story. Maybe I would've appreciated the story more knowing what it's meaning is in literary history. ( )

Late 18th-century satire on British landlords in Ireland, supposedly written by a trusted longtime servant. Edgeworth paints an intriguing portrait fo corruption and its effects on both the haves and have-nots. ( )

I'm going to start off this review by saying I was forced to read this book for a class, which is never the best way to find books you like.

That said, Castle Rackrent wasn't too bad. It was more boring than anything else. The book is being told as if Thady, the Rackrent's butler (for lack of a better word) were narrating to you out loud the history of the family. You go through four generations of Rackrents and learn about their good points and their bad, how some were good people but weak-minded and how one locked up his wife for eight years because she wouldn't give him her diamond necklace.

That's about it. An okay story, but it just seems there wasn't a point to it. I can appreciate what this did for literature as a whole, being the first Anglo-Irish novel and whatnot, and there were some very funny parts, especially the names of places (such as Crookaghnawaturgh, Gruneaghoolaghan, and Allballycarricko'shaughlin, to name a few) but I doubt I would have read it if it wasn't for a class and I doubt I'll read it ever again. ( )

A funny little story, scarcely fifty pages, and oh so different to expectation. From the title and the period I think I'd mixed it up with something more nascent Gothic in style, like Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho, but instead, this is the tale of four generations of the dissolute aristocratic family the Rackrents, originally the O'Shaughlins. (Speaking of names, there are a few townships at whose nomenclatures I wasn't sure whether I was supposed to laugh, but did anyway.) Similar to Ishiguro's Remains of the Day, the story is told from the point of view of a blindly faithful underling, Thady McQuirk (and that name made it difficult to work out, in the first half-page or so, whether the narrator was male or female). I'm not sure whether poor old Thady ever gains enlightenment to go with his disillusionment, but I enjoyed reading between the lines of his seemingly innocuous portraiture to dissect the characters within - particulary his self-designated favourite Rackrent, Sir Condy.

"That's the secret of Castle Rackrent!" is a line I remember vividly from The Great Gatsby, never knowing why. Now I too have been initiated into the secret, and it's not a terribly hidden one (it just *screams* Marxist reading!): the hollowness of wealth, its sham pretentions - it's all in the name of Castle Rackrent. ( )