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ABSTRACT
The inclusion of paratextual apparatus within a diary, alongside attention to presentation, historical contextualisation, and the employment of textual strategies makes it clear that an audience is to the fore, particularly a future or posthumous one. Connections with posterity permit the eighteenth-century female diarist to imagine a situation whereby their diary could be a document connecting them tangentially to literary and cultural authority. Analysis of the diary of Elizabeth Edgeworth (1781–1800) permits a better understanding of the relationship between diaries and posterity; the strategies for the achievement of an audience; the methods of communication with this audience; and the role of life writing in controlling and shaping a family’s narrative and legacy. The difficulties in achieving an audience for one’s works are evident throughout Elizabeth’s diary, as she attempts to negotiate her personal environs, and add to the family record of the Edgeworths of Edgeworthstown in the wake of the 1798 Rebellion in Ireland. Elizabeth’s diary functions primarily as a public document, one that tells us much about the experience of growing up within a famous family during a pivotal time, and of one family member’s attempts to communicate and preserve a particular version of this experience for posterity.
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Notes
1 Catherine Macauley is an exceptional instance of a female historian who achieved status, fame, and public acclaim.
2 Frances Burney famously does the exact opposite, placing herself centre stage throughout, as noted by Clark Citation2001. The addition of paratextual material by Marie Bashkirtseff (1858–1884) to her diary shortly before her death presents an interesting point of comparison from the late nineteenth century; see Wilson Citation2010.
3 A second Edgeworth diary in the NLI, focused primarily on the political events of 1803, has been attributed to Maria Edgeworth (Citation1803b). However, the evidence points strongly to its having been composed by a male member of the Edgeworth family, most probably Elizabeth’s close contemporary, her brother Henry. Supporting evidence for the interpretation that the diary is not written by Maria Edgeworth include the diarist’s writing constantly to men, and, notably, to asking one man, a Mr Wickham to resign; and to Lord Granard for orders; as well as such pointed signals as the diarist referring to a letter received being addressed to Maria from Lady Granard.
4 There are at least nine surviving letters from Elizabeth Edgeworth in the NLI collection (Citation1798–1799), eight to Harriet, and one to Richard Lovell’s final wife, Frances, née Beaufort, written in French.
5 Although the records note that sixteen had been born at this point, six had died, either as infants, during childhood, or in their 30s, including the first-born, Richard, who died in 1796. There were thus ten surviving children at the time of the diary’s composition, before the birth in 1799 of the first child of the fourth marriage. Richard Lovell and Frances Edgeworth would go on to have six surviving children in total.
6 The annotator of the diary notes that Elizabeth died on April 30, while the Memoirs of Richard Lovell Edgeworth state August 1800 (Citation1820, 262). She is also frequently mistakenly recorded as surviving until 1805. She died from the same disease as her mother.
7 All of these elements highlight the importance of engagement with manuscript sources where they do survive, as many such aspects are completely obliterated from published versions.
8 Other family members also espoused teaching roles. The diary mentions how Lovell lectured family members on geography, and acquired chemical apparatus to instruct his siblings, for example. Richard Lovell’s first wife, Anna Maria Elers (1743–1773), has not been credited with substantially altering the pedagogical landscape in the way her successors did. Indeed, the writings of their daughter Anna Maria, later Beddoes, recall a negative picture of the education meted out to the earliest children, and we know that the eldest child, Richard, received a Rousseauian education, which was later deemed to have negatively impacted him (Myers Citation1999, 229, 246).
9 The diary records that activities also included much drawing; bathing; letter writing and receiving; gown work; drawing pincushions; playing at fox & geese; dancing; and fiddle playing.
10 Maria Edgeworth herself did perform the role of copyist for her father, although Aileen Douglas underlines how this role allowed her privileged access to her father’s papers and so was bound up with notions of trust and intimacy (Citation2002, 372).
11 Her sickliness may also have contributed to her exclusion from certain activities.
12 The original heir, Richard, died in 1796, and the first Lovell died as a baby in 1766.
13 There are also examples of diaries being eagerly read or expected by secondary characters in both Belinda and Patronage (Citation1801, chap. xxi; Citation1814).
14 Maria Edgeworth did keep a record of conversations and meetings in small books and notebooks, such as ‘Maria Edgeworth’s notes on Paris’ (Citation1803a), but did not record her impressions as such or keep a diary. With sincere thanks to Susan Manly for sharing her thoughts on Edgeworth’s lack of engagement with the diary form and directing me to these details.
15 This communication with a future unspecified reader was notable in other eighteenth-century Irish diaries; for example, Mary Mathew’s address to posthumous readers in her diary from 1777 (Citation1991).
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Amy Prendergast
Amy Prendergast is Teaching Fellow in Eighteenth-Century Writing in the School of English, Trinity College Dublin. Her publications in the long eighteenth century have focused on women’s writing, Irish literature, and transnational studies. She is author of Literary Salons Across Britain and Ireland in the Long Eighteenth Century (Palgrave, 2015), and her most recent work has appeared in Women’s Writing (2020) and Irish Literature in Transition (Cambridge UP, 2020). She is currently working on her second monograph, provisionally titled Women's Diaries in Ireland, 1760–1810: Narrating Society, Negotiating Selfhood.