SOURCE: "Books in General," in The New Statesman and Nation, Vol. XLV, No. 1163, June 20, 1953, pp. 749-50.

Pritchett, a modern British novelist, short story writer, and critic, is respected for his mastery of the short story and for what critics describe as his judicious, reliable, and insightful literary criticism. In the following essay, Pritchett praises Edgeworth for her sharp eye for social detail and her gift for dialogue, singling out Castle Rackrent as her single enduring masterpiece.

He was greatly mourned at the Curragh where his cattle were well-known; and all who had taken up his bets were particularly inconsolable for his loss to society.

The quotation does not come from The Irish R.M., but from the mother, or should one say the aunt, of the Anglo-Irish novel—Maria Edgeworth. The eighteenth-century note is unmistakable but so, even without the word Curragh, is the Irishness. One will never...