Castle Rackrent and Ennui

Marilyn Butler’s introduction discusses how these two bold, groundbreaking works established Edgeworth’s reputation as a pioneer of the nineteenth-century novel.

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 expose of the Irish class system, and a portrait of a nation in turmoil.