Castle Rackrent and Ennui

By Maria Edgeworth

Thady Quirk devoted steward to the decaying estate of the Rackrent family narrates a riotous story of four generations of a dying dynasty in Castle Rackrent (1800). Thady will defend his masters to the end but eventually his naivety and blind loyalty cause him to ignore the warning signs as the family's excesses lead them to ruin. This volume also includes Ennui the entertaining 'confessions' of the Earl of Glenthorn a bored spoiled aristocrat. Desperate to be free from 'the demon of ennui' Glenthorn's quest for happiness takes him through violence and revolution and leads to intriguing twists of fate. Both novels offer a darkly comic and satirical expos of the Irish class system and a portrait of a nation in turmoil.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0140433201
• ISBN13: 9780140433203
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 0.61 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.1" x 7.8"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

Amazingly wonderful

Maria Edgeworth was a pioneer Irish writer who was justifiably popular about 200 years ago, and whose work continues to be read with great pleasure to this day. Ennui is a masterpiece of humorous satire, brilliantly phrased in the way only great literature can be. To read Edgeworth is to find a "new" author of the caliber of Fielding, Dickens, Hardy, or Scott. Her style is more entertaining and pithy than any of these. The topics she writes about are of universal interest and lack nothing in the way of contemporary applicability. Human nature quite obviously has not changed in two centuries, and is unlikely to change in two more - when her books are likely still to be read. Give Edgeworth's work a try, you are almost certain to have a wonderful experience.