Maria Edgeworth and Adam Smith

A new book from Jeanna Smialek

In the novel, a comedy about the downfall of a family of Irish landowners, Edgeworth doesn’t just lightly reference economics. Large chunks were clearly built around Smith’s foundational 1776 text “The Wealth of Nations.” Edgeworth was writing about price setting, monopolies, productive land management — ideas that preoccupied the early economists. Economics was in the very title: Smith had called irrationally high land charges “racked rent.”

I wondered if anyone else had noticed. A search through academic journals showed that a specialized few had clocked Edgeworth’s contribution. The economic historian William Henderson once called “Castle Rackrent” a “literary extension” of Smith’s work, arguing that it had “extended the influence” of early economics by inspiring other writers to apply its theories to the social sphere. Other academics, including Susan Manly at the University of St. Andrews, had also written about Edgeworth’s heavy use of economics.

That is Jeanna Smialek writing in the New York Times with an extract of her new book The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth: How a Nineteenth-Century Novelist Taught the World Economics. I must confess that even though I am very interested in the interaction of Smith’s work with that of the novelists’, I do not find Castle Rackrent much fun, though perhaps a re-read will cure me of that feeling. The whole piece is fascinating and I hope to read and review her book soon.

There was, however, an obvious barrier to bringing avant-garde philosophical and scientific ideas to the masses. They could be complicated and difficult to understand. The Edgeworth pair noted that it could be useful “to mix some political & commercial knowledge with fictions that amuse the fancy.” In fact, this was something Edgeworth had already begun to do.

Edgeworth was embarking on a project that was larger than her own oeuvre. She began to coach other literary women on how to include economics in their work. She struck up a close friendship with Jane Marcet, a London socialite who had already written a primer on chemistry, and the two women corresponded about economic topics. When Marcet wrote what could be considered the first textbook on economics, Edgeworth gave her extensive notes on the rough draft.

Here is Smialek’s book. A trade book about Smith’s influence on novelists should be written about Jane Austen too of course…