Burke, Edgeworth, and Ireland’s Discontents

This chapter re-examines the party-political career of Edmund Burke and the writings of Maria Edgeworth in relation to a deep history of Anglo-Irish ‘discontents’ and their challenges to the ‘count’ of politics. Complicating ‘Burkean’ appeals to hierarchy and order, the chapter uncovers the conflicted party identity that is apparent within writings by and about Edmund Burke, returning to view the various channels of feeling engaged, for example, during his involvement in debates over ‘absentee’ landlords. The chapter goes on to give a reading of The Absentee (1812) that calls attention to recalcitrant elements that exceed systems of representation in Edgeworth’s novel, which remains animated in this reading by those elements left behind, in both senses, by emergent systems of governance. The chapter’s opening section speculates about the role of biography in Lewis Namier’s History of Parliament and asks how the novel form, in the hands of women writers, provided unique vantage points on political systems organized around men.