Harrington is an 1817 novel by Anglo-Irish novelist Maria Edgeworth. The novel was written in response to a letter from a Jewish-American reader who complained about Edgeworth's stereotypically anti-semitic portrayals of Jews in Castle Rackrent (1800), Belinda (1801), The Absentee (1812), and her Moral Tales (1801) for children. [1] The novel is an autobiography of a "recovering anti-Semite", whose youthful prejudices are undone by contact with various Jewish characters, particularly a young woman. It draws parallels between the religious discrimination of the Jews and the Catholics in Ireland. Set between the passing of the Jewish Naturalisation Act 1753 and the Gordon Riots of 1780, the timeframe highlights these connections. [2]
Harrington follows the protagonist of the same name who explores his memories to better understand his views on Jews. The novel begins with Harrington's early image of Jews, formed by stories told by his maid of "Simon the Jew". Harrington remarks that the stories were "used upon every occasion to reduce me to passive obedience." [3] His parents further strengthen this image by rewarding Harrington's antisemitism. Only after attending public school and meeting the bully Mowbray are Harrington's views on Jews changed. Mowbray's tormenting of the Jewish peddler Jacob causes this sudden shift in thinking.
The story shifts to a romance novel with the introduction of Berenice Montenero, an American Jew who moved to England with her wealthy father. Harrington's family and friends are alarmed at his (Harrington's) choice of a Jewish woman, a relationship further impeded by the advances of Harrington's old rival Mowbray. Seeking marriage into a wealthy family, Mowbray's attempts to court Berenice are denied. As revenge, Mowbray brings charges of insanity against Harrington, a situation further compounded by his family threatening to disown him. To marry Berenice, Harrington must overcome these obstacles and prove himself to Mr. Montenero. He is thus tested "by experiences designed to arouse his enthusiasm and fear." [4] Mowbray is exposed as the culprit behind Harrington's supposed insanity and Harrington is deemed worthy of marriage to Berenice. This strange courtship is concluded with the revelation by Mr. Montenero, "I have tried you to the utmost, and am satisfied both of the steadiness of your principles and of the strength of your attachment to my daughter-Berenice is not a Jewess." [5]
Titus Caesar Vespasianus was Roman emperor from 79 to 81. A member of the Flavian dynasty, Titus succeeded his father Vespasian upon his death, becoming the first Roman emperor ever to succeed his biological father.
Maria Edgeworth was a prolific Anglo-Irish novelist of adults' and children's literature. She was one of the first realist writers in children's literature and a significant figure in the evolution of the novel in Europe. She held critical views on estate management, politics, and education, and corresponded with some of the leading literary and economic writers, including Sir Walter Scott and David Ricardo. During the first decade of the 19th century she was one of the most widely read novelists in Britain and Ireland. Her name today is most commonly associated with Castle Rackrent, her first novel, in which she adopted an Irish Catholic voice to narrate the dissipation and decline of a family from her own landed Anglo-Irish class.
Castle Rackrent is a short novel by Maria Edgeworth published in 1800. Unlike many of her other novels, which were heavily "edited" by her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, before their publication, the published version is close to her original intention.
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Daniel Deronda is a novel written by English author George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann Evans, first published in eight parts (books) February to September 1876. It was the last novel she completed and the only one set in the Victorian society of her day. The work's mixture of social satire and moral searching, along with its sympathetic rendering of Jewish proto-Zionist ideas, has made it the controversial final statement of one of the most renowned Victorian novelists.
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Douglas Lancelot Reed was a British novelist and political commentator. His book Insanity Fair (1938) examined the state of Europe and the megalomania of Adolf Hitler before World War II. Subsequently, Reed believed in a long-term Zionist conspiracy to impose a world government on an enslaved humanity. He was also staunchly anti-Communist, and once wrote that Nazism was a "stooge or stalking horse" meant to further the aims of the "Communist Empire." When The Times ran his obituary, it condemned Reed as a "virulent antisemite".
Richard Lovell Edgeworth was an Anglo-Irish politician, writer and inventor. He had 22 children.
Belinda is an 1801 novel by the Anglo-Irish writer Maria Edgeworth. It was first published in three volumes by Joseph Johnson of London. The novel was Edgeworth's second published, and was considered controversial in its day for its depiction of an interracial marriage. It was reprinted by Pandora Press in 1986.
Stereotypes of Jews are generalized representations of Jews, often caricatured and of a prejudiced and antisemitic nature.
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Honora Edgeworth was an eighteenth-century English writer, mainly known for her associations with literary figures of the day particularly Anna Seward and the Lunar Society, and for her work on children's education. Sneyd was born in Bath in 1751, and following the death of her mother in 1756 was raised by Canon Thomas Seward and his wife Elizabeth in Lichfield, Staffordshire until she returned to her father's house in 1771. There, she formed a close friendship with their daughter, Anna Seward. Having had a romantic engagement to John André and having declined the hand of Thomas Day, she married Richard Edgeworth as his second wife in 1773, living on the family estate in Ireland till 1776. There she helped raise his children from his first marriage, including Maria Edgeworth, and two children of her own. Returning to England she fell ill with tuberculosis, which was incurable, dying at Weston in Staffordshire in 1780. She is the subject of a number of Anna Seward's poems, and with her husband developed concepts of childhood education, resulting in a series of books, such as Practical Education, based on her observations of the Edgeworth children. She is known for her stand on women's rights through her vigorous rejection of the proposal by Day, in which she outlined her views on equality in marriage.
Frances Anne Edgeworth (1769–1865), known as Fanny, was an Irish botanical artist and memoirist. She was the stepmother and confidant of the author Maria Edgeworth.
Rachel Mordecai Lazarus was an American educator and correspondent with the children's writer Maria Edgeworth.
Mothers of the Novel: 100 Good Women Writers Before Jane Austen (1986), by Dale Spender, is a foundational study for the reclamation project central to feminist literary studies in English in the late 1980s and 1990s.
Ennui is a novel by Maria Edgeworth published in 1809. It is a fictitious memoir of the Earl of Glenthorn, an English man who experiences excessive boredom (ennui) and attempts to find novelty and meaning in life. Edgeworth began writing the novel before 1805, and though she said she finished it that year, she likely continued revising it until around 1808.