General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1908 Original Publisher: Caldwell Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: NOTE BY CHARLES ELIOT NORTON, A. M.. LL. D, Emeritus Professor of Art at Harvard University The best of Miss Edgeworth’s stories certainly deserve permanence and I cannot doubt that they would still possess attraction for the younger generation. They would have the advantage of widening the horizon of the interests of modern American children, and the pictures they afford of other social conditions, of the good breeding and pleasant manners of the old time could not but have the charm at least of contrast to the general spirit and prevalent characteristics of the children of the present day… . I hope that whether as a single volume or with the tales separately issued, they will prove successful, and that the success may be such as to lead to the publication of other volumes of selections from Miss Edgeworth’s books for children. Shady Hill, Cambridge, Mass. INTRODUCTION Among the many distinguished women of her time Maria Edgeworth, who lived in Ireland from 1767 to 1849, occupies a position in the first rank. Her work, while she was living, won for her fame, honour, love, respect, admiration, and
troops of friends
of all classes, high and low, rich and poor, and since her death it has never ceased to be held in high esteem by the best minds of each succeeding generation. Among her novels
Castle Rack-rent is placed high in the same category as the best of the work of Sir Walter Scott, and the famous Essay on
Irish Bulls
which she and her father wrote together is a classic as familiar and as famous. But it is of her books for children that I wish mo…
