Amazon.com description: Product Description: Maria Edgeworth (1767 - 1849) was an Irish novelist. Maria managed her father's large estate and later drew on this knowledge in her novels. Maria's stories had a moral purpose. The stories often pointed out the responsibility of the upper class toward their tenants. The author says that children must have good role models in their literature. There is a huge difference between ignorance and innocence. The Absentee is the story of Irish landlords living in England. They neglect their natural duties and station in life and strive to take their place in the English fashionable world. The novel shows the Irish as a simple people lacking ethics or as child-like and pure. England wanted to colonize Ireland and this novel evokes that sentiment,