Abstract
Abstract
Maria Edgeworth (1768–1849) was an Anglo-Irish author well read in political economy whose literature enjoyed wide circulation in the nineteenth century. Several studies examine her representation of especially Adam Smith’s theories of political economy in her fiction. What researchers have not yet explored is how Edgeworth’s philosophy of happiness affected her views of political economy and induced her to depart from Smith’s theories on certain points. This essay examines her appraisal of capitalistic wealth accumulation and luxury in two separate sections. Edgeworth viewed the contributions of both wealth and luxury to happiness as minimal, prizing happiness as a higher good than wealth. Edgeworth can therefore be characterised as a eudaemonist and a thinker reconnecting political economy to a moral philosophical inquiry into happiness and virtue. Her fiction thus offers a counter discourse to political economy’s narrow focus on the generation and distribution of wealth.