Maria Edgeworth was born in Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, on 1 January 1768, the third child and eldest daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth (henceforth RLE) and the first of his four wives, Anna Maria Elers (1743-73). After the death of her mother from puerperal fever in March 1773 when Edgeworth was five years old, and the scandalously swift remarriage of her father to Honora Sneyd of Lichfield (with whom he had fallen in love well before Anna Maria's death) in July 1773, the family moved back to Edgeworthstown in County Longford. The loss of Anna Maria and the rapidity with
which she was supplanted in RLE's affections by Honora affected the young Maria Edgeworth deeply, especially as she had seen little of her father in her first five years – he had spent much time away from home, some of it abroad in France, pursuing various engineering projects, and absorbed in the experiment of educating his eldest son, Richard, along the lines advocated by Rousseau in Emile (the attempt was a failure: Richard grew up wild). Disturbed and unhappy, Edgeworth's behaviour worsened – she threw tea in someone's face, cut up an aunt's sofa cover, and
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