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The Absentee is a novel by Maria Edgeworth, first published in 1812, that expresses the systemic evils of the absentee landlord class of Anglo-Irish and the desperate condition of the Irish peasantry. With many turns to the plot the novel has lots of information about Ireland as well as Irish dialect and details of shallow London fashionable life, and the egregious results of the propertied classes treating their Irish lands as a resource to be exploited rather than as a relationship among classes and with the land.

In a beautiful and retired part of England lived Mrs. Villars, a lady whose accurate understanding, benevolent heart, and steady temper, peculiarly fitted her for the most difficult, as well as most important of all occupations-the education of youth. This task she had undertaken; and twenty young persons were put under her care, with the perfect confidence of their parents.

'Are you to be at Lady Clonbrony's gala next week?' said Lady Langdale to Mrs. Dareville, whilst they were waiting for their carriages in the crush-room of the opera house. 'Oh yes everybody's to be there, I hear, ' replied Mrs. Dareville. 'Your ladyship, of course?' 'Why, I don't know-if I possibly can. Lady Clonbrony makes it such a point with me, that I believe I must look in upon her for a few minutes. They are going to a prodigious expense on this occasion. Soho tells me the reception rooms are all to be new furnished, and in the most magnificent style.'

What a misfortune it is to be born a woman In vain, dear Leonora, would you reconcile me to my doom. Condemned to incessant hypocrisy, or everlasting misery, woman is the slave or the outcast of society. Confidence in our fellow-creatures, or in ourselves, alike forbidden us, to what purpose have we understandings, which we may not use? hearts, which we may not trust? To our unhappy sex genius and sensibility are the most treacherous gifts of Heaven. Why should we cultivate talents merely to gratify the caprice of tyrants? Why seek for knowledge, which can prove only that our wretchedness is...

Our great lexicographer, in his celebrated eulogium on Dr. Watts, thus speaks in commendation of those productions which he so successfully penned for the pleasure and instruction of the juvenile portion of the community. 'For children, ' says Dr. Johnson, 'he condescended to lay aside the philosopher, the scholar, and the wit, to write little poems of devotion, and systems of instruction adapted to their wants and capacities, from the dawn of reason to its gradation of advance in the morning of life. Every man acquainted with the common principles of human action will look with veneration on...

"Whilst yet a boy I began to feel the dreadful symptoms of that mental malady, which baffles the skill of medicine, and for which wealth can purchase only temporary alleviation. For this complaint there is no precise English name-but, alas the foreign term is now naturalized in England.-Among the higher classes, whether in the wealthy, or the fashionable world, who is unacquainted with ennui?"
At a young age, the Earl of Glenthorn inherits a title, a large fortune, and estates in England and Ireland. But his enormous wealth provides no relief from his ennui, a state of...