8vo. In two volumes. [4], 392; [4], vii, [1], 498pp, [2]. With an engraved portrait frontispiece to each volume and a further seven engraved plates (two folding). Handsomely bound in contemporary gilt-tooled tree-calf, contrasting red and green morocco lettering-pieces. A trifle rubbed, spines sunned.

The first edition of the collected memoirs of politician, educator and inventor Richard Lovell Edgeworth (1744-1817), begun in his own hand and completed by his second child, Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth (1768- 1849). Lovell Edgeworth, manager of a significant estate in Edgeworthstown, County Longford, fathered an astounding 22 children, many of whom accompanied him on his tours of the Midlands, France, and Belgium. He completed a single autobiographical volume in his later years; a sequel, found in the second volume of this set, was composed by Maria after his death.

Maria Edgeworth achieved critical and commercial success with both her Irish novels, among them Castle Rackrent (1800) and Belinda (1801), and, following in her father's footsteps, a notable treatise on pedagogy, Practical Education (1798). Alongside her father, Maria met and corresponded with numerous eminent scientists, scholars, and writers, among them Humphry Davy, Lord Byron (whom she disliked) and Sir Walter Scott. Later in life, Maria, living in Ireland, raised and distributed relief during the Great Famine, although she was stringent in requiring her dependents to pay rent before receiving assistance. Continually encouraged by her father before his death, her complex body of work deals with prescient and interwoven themes, including Irish national identity, Catholic emancipation, women's liberation, and Jewish struggles.