Details
EDGEWORTH, MARIA. Autograph letter signed to Madame de Pastoret in Paris, Edgeworth's Town, Ireland, 6 June 1814. 4 pages, 4to, with a few interlinear additions and the final portion of the letter written vertically in the upper margin of the first page, address panel and postmarks, a tiny burn hole.
A lengthy letter to an old French friend, giving news of the Edgeworth family and mutual friends and reporting the recent publication of her novel Patronage (begun in 1787 under the title of Freeman Family and written for the amusement of her stepmother who was recovering from an illness): "...You ask me what I am & what I have been doing lately. At present I am not writing anything, but I have within these few months published a novel or rather a moral tale called Patronage which Madame Gautier tells me she was just beginning to read when she last wrote to me. We shall be curious, and anxious to know what you think of it, and I should consider it as a proof of your regard if you would tell me freely what you think yourself and the general opinion of those who read it. If it should be translated it will give the translators less trouble than some of the former tales they have translated in which there was a great deal of English & Irish Patois. I should much like to know whether a little tale called Madame de Fleury [by Edgeworth and first published in her Tales of Fashionable Life, 1809] has ever reached you & whether you know any body or whether M. de Pastoret knows any body, who resembles Madame de Fleury?..."
A lengthy letter to an old French friend, giving news of the Edgeworth family and mutual friends and reporting the recent publication of her novel Patronage (begun in 1787 under the title of Freeman Family and written for the amusement of her stepmother who was recovering from an illness): "...You ask me what I am & what I have been doing lately. At present I am not writing anything, but I have within these few months published a novel or rather a moral tale called Patronage which Madame Gautier tells me she was just beginning to read when she last wrote to me. We shall be curious, and anxious to know what you think of it, and I should consider it as a proof of your regard if you would tell me freely what you think yourself and the general opinion of those who read it. If it should be translated it will give the translators less trouble than some of the former tales they have translated in which there was a great deal of English & Irish Patois. I should much like to know whether a little tale called Madame de Fleury [by Edgeworth and first published in her Tales of Fashionable Life, 1809] has ever reached you & whether you know any body or whether M. de Pastoret knows any body, who resembles Madame de Fleury?..."