The relations between Edgeworth and his daughter Maria were peculiarly close, and she gratefully acknowledges how much she owed to his suggestions and criticisms.  He did not share his friend Mr. Day’s objections to literary ladies, and was a great admirer of Mrs. Barbauld’s writings: 

’Ever the true friend and champion of female literature, and zealous for the honour of the female sex, he rejoiced with all the enthusiasm of a warm heart when he found, as he now did, female genius guided by feminine discretion.  He exulted in every instance of literary celebrity, supported by the amiable and respectable virtues of private life; proving by example that the cultivation of female talents does not unfit women for their domestic duties and situation in society.’

When Maria began to write she always told her father her rough plan, and he, ’with the instinct of a good critic, used to fix immediately upon that which would best answer the purpose.—­“Sketch that and show it to me!”—­These words’ (she adds), ’from the experience of his sagacity, never failed to inspire me with hopes of success.  It was then sketched.  Sometimes, when I was fond of a particular part, I use to dilate on it in the sketch; but to this he always objected —­“I don’t want any of your painting—­none of your drapery!—­I can imagine all that—­let me see the bare skeleton.” . . .

’After a sketch had his approbation, he would not see the filling it up till it had been worked upon for a week or a fortnight, or till the first thirty or forty pages were written; then they were read to him; and if he thought them going on tolerably well, the pleasure in his eyes, the approving sound of his voice, even without the praise he so warmly bestowed, were sufficient and delightful excitements to “go on and finish.”  When he thought that there was spirit in what was written, but that it required, as it often did, great correction, he would say, “Leave that to me; it is my business to cut and correct—­yours to write on.”  His skill in cutting, his decision in criticism, was peculiarly useful to me.  His ready invention and infinite resource, when I had run myself into difficulties or absurdities, never failed to extricate me at my utmost need. . . .

’Independently of all the advantages, which I as an individual received from my father’s constant course of literary instruction, this was of considerable utility in another and less selfish point of view.  My father called upon all the family to hear and judge of all we were writing.  The taste for literature, and for judging of literary composition, was by this means formed and exercised in a large family, including a succession of nine or ten children, who grew up during the course of these twenty-five years.  Stories of children exercised the judgment of children, and so on in proportion to their respective ages, all giving their opinions, and trying their powers of criticism fearlessly and freely. . . .