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Stylish, sceptical, cosmopolitan, heir to Swift's fantasy and wit, Maria Edgeworth's fiction explores the relations of England and Ireland at a time of historical crisis. Castle Rackrent is Irish family history vividly and unreliably narrated by the loyal servant Thady, steward on the decaying Rackrent estates. In this comic tour-de-force Maria Edgeworth anticipates great themes of the European novel - colonialism, class, master-servant relationships, money, power and sexual inequality - but Castle Rackrent's true sequel is Ennui (1809). Beginning as the 'confessions' of an old-regime aristocrat, Lord Glenthorn's story takes him to Ireland, and impels him in a fable of bizarre transformations to play a reluctant part in Ireland's year of Revolution, 1798.
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