THOMAS NOON TALFOURD: ‘Final Memorials of Charles Lamb.’ MARIA EDGEWORTH. 1767-1849. MARIA EDGEWORTH. Maria Edgeworth--tiny and witty as Shakespeare’s Maria--was born on the 1st of January, 1767, at the home of her mother’s parents, Black Bourton, “between the towns of Farringdon, Berks, and Burford, Oxon.” She was the daughter of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Elers; her father came of an English family which had settled in Ireland in Queen Elizabeth’s time. Her mother died in 1773, when Maria was but six years old; and in the same year Richard Edgeworth married Honora Sneyd. Maria had passed her early years partly at Black Bourton and partly at Hare Hatch, between Reading and Maidenhead, Berkshire, where her parents lived. On Mr. Edgeworth’s second marriage she accompanied him and his wife to Edgeworthstown, the Irish estate which had fallen to him on the death of his father a few years before. In 1775 Maria was sent to the boarding-school of a Mrs. Latiffiere, at Derby. In 1780 Mrs. Honora Edgeworth, the beautiful stepmother to whom the affectionate child was much attached, died of consumption. About this time Maria was taken from the Derby school and sent to finish her education in London. Less than eight months after the death of his second wife, the elastic-spirited Mr. Edgeworth married her sister Elizabeth. In 1781 Maria was threatened with the loss of her eyesight; this misfortune was averted by care, after much suffering. In 1782 she left school for Edgeworthstown, which was her home from this time until her death. She occupied herself in study, writing, assisting her father in the business of the estate, and teaching the younger children. (Her father “had, in all, twenty-two children born to him; several died in infancy.”) In 1797 Mrs. Elizabeth Edgeworth died, and in the following year the perennial Benedick was married to Frances Anne Beaufort. In 1802 Maria went abroad with a family party, and while in Paris received an offer of marriage from M. Edelcrantz, a Swede, which she refused. In 1813 the Edgeworths visited London, where Maria made the acquaintance of many of the well-known writers of the day. In 1817 Mr. Edgeworth died. His loss was very deeply felt by his devoted eldest daughter, and for a time she was unable to write without his wonted encouragement. Little remains to chronicle except Maria’s occasional visits to England, and her stay at Abbotsford in 1823. In 1825 Sir Walter Scott was her guest at Edgeworthstown. They travelled in company to the Lakes of Killarney, and parted in Dublin. Maria Edgeworth died, very suddenly and painlessly, on May 22, 1849. She had driven out, in her usual health, a few hours before.