Leonora by Maria Edgeworth, Fiction, Classics, Literary 12+

🔖 Although Edgeworth is known for having her novels (Castle Rackrent, The Absentee) address issues of nationalism in an Anglo-Irish context, Leonora instead privileges English manners over French ones. Leonora, though not published until 1806, was commenced three years before that date: the circumstances under which it was written were to a certain extent unique in Maria Edgeworth's life; for we are told that throughout the time occupied in writing the story, she had in mind the offer of marriage made to her by Monsieur Edelcrantz, a Swedish gentleman of good position, "of superior understanding and mild manners," as she told her aunt in a letter partly written before the proposal and finished afterwards. This seems, from the biographies, to have been the only time this truly good and sensible woman was ever sought in marriage by any man; and it shows some of the good qualities she possessed, that though she refused him, yet from the respect she bore him and the esteem in which she held him, this story was written to a large extent with a view to his approbation, though we are told that she never knew whether or not he had read it.