Letter from Lord Byron to John Murray II.
27 Dec 1813.
Ld. Holland is laid up with ye gout & would feel very much obliged if you could obtain & send as soon as possible Me. [203/204] D’Arblay’s (or even Miss Edgeworth’s thing) new work. I know they are not out but it is perhaps possible for your Majesty to command what we cannot with much sueing purchase as yet. I need not say when you are able or willing to confer the same favour on me I shall be obliged—I would almost fall sick myself to get at Me. D’Arblay’s writings.
Source: Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols (London: Murray, 1973–94), III, 203–04.
Notes: Lord Holland is Henry Fox, Third Baron Holland. M[adam]e D’Arblay’s work is The Wanderer (EN2 1814: 17).

Letter from Lord Byron to John Murray II.
11 Jan 1814.
I have redde [sic] ‘Patronage’ it is full of praises of Lord Ellenborough!!! from which I infer near & dear relations at the bar—and has much of her heartlessness & little of her humour (wit she has none) and she must live more than 3 weeks in London to describe good (or if you will) high society—the ton of her book is as vulgar as her father.
Source: Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols (London: John Murray, 1973–94), IV, 25.

Letter from Princess Charlotte to Mercer Elphinstone.
17 Jan 1814.
Miss Edgworth’s [sic] new novel of Patronage I have just read. It is full long, I confess, but I think it clever & with much knowledge of the world, but bitter.
Source: The Letters of Princess Charlotte 1811–1817, ed. by A. Aspinall (London: Home and Van Thal, 1949), p. 106.

Letter from Sydney Smith to Elizabeth Vassall Fox, Lady Holland.
20 Jan 1814.
I have not read Miss Edgeworth’s novel nor have I much opinion of her powers of execution saving and excepting Irish characters. Every thing else I have read of hers I thought very indifferent, even her Tale called Eunice. If she has put into her Novels people who fed her and her odious father, she is not Trustworthy.
Source: The Letters of Sydney Smith, ed. by Nowell C. Smith, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1953), I, 244.
Notes: Nowell C. Smith probably mistakes Eunice for ‘Ennui’, published as part of the first series of Edgeworth’s Tales of Fashionable Life (EN 1809: 22). Letter is addressed from Heslington.

Diary Entry by Henry Crabb Robinson.
23 Jan 1814.
Thomas and I at five walked to Newington, where we drank tea. Mrs. Barbauld was very chatty and agreeable. We talked of Patronage, which Mrs. Barbauld praised; but she says it is not so entertaining as some of Miss Burney’s works.
Source: Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers, ed. by Edith J. Morley, 3 vols (London: Dent, 1938), I, 136.
Notes: Barbauld is Anna Letitia Barbauld (1743–1825), poet and miscellaneous writer. By Miss Burney is probably meant Frances Burney, Madame D’Arblay, not Sarah Harriet.

Letter from Sarah Harriet Burney to Henry Colburn.
24 Jan 1814.
I hope, that considering the thickness of the Volumes, and the impossibility of reading any work of Miss Edgeworth’s with the carelessness and haste a common Novel may be skimmed over with, I shall not be thought to have detained ‘Patronage’ a very unreasonable time. I thank you most cordially for the loan. Nobody more thoroughly venerates the admirable Author than I do—And in this last work, she really has excelled herself! Every young man ought particularly to study it—but it contains many hints useful and good for all ages, conditions, and characters. She is the pride of English female writers—and I do positively believe, the most useful author, whether male or female, now existing.
Source: The Letters of Sarah Harriet Burney, ed. by Lorna J. Clark (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1997), p. 179.

Letter from Joanna Baillie to Walter Scott.
3 Feb 1814.
[…] with spectacles on nose we have been reading our books and amongst these Patronage. There are some well drawn characters in it & good lessons for many people, but I fear it is too much loaded with discussions in dialogue & ordinary love matters to give it every chance for being so popular as most of her other works are.
Source: Collected Letters of Joanna Baillie, ed. by Judith Bailey Slagle, 2 vols (Madison, NJ: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1999), I, 330; also see Millgate #11830.

Letter from Mary Leadbeater to Melesina Trench.
9 Feb 1814.
Diplomacy just now sounds familiar to me, having lately read ‘Patronage,’ but in such a hurry that, to view it soberly, I must read it again. Admirable Maria Edgeworth! With all the noble traits which mark Lord Oldborough’s character, I had rather thy son resembled the accomplished country gentleman, Mr. Percy, than him.
Source: Mary Leadbeater, The Leadbeater Papers, 2 vols (London: Bell and Daldy, 1862; rpt. Routledge/Thoemmes Press, 1998), II, 260.

Letter from Henry Mackenzie to George Home.
19 Feb 1814.
The Subject of this, however, is a Book, which my young people put into my hands, of which I have glanced over the whole, & read, fairly read, a considerable Part. It is the new Work of a Lady, certainly of very great Merit in her line, Miss Edgeworth, Patronage, of which every body now talks here, perhaps the more that the State of the Roads prevented its reaching Edinr so soon as it otherwise might have done; has it reach’d Berwickshire or Paxton? // I wish you to read it, because the Subject is one which Yourself wrote two excellent Papers in a Work which I hope you have not forgotten, the Mirror. I will say to you, with the most perfect impartiality, I like your way of treating the Subject better than the Lady’s; I think it is more delicate, has more feeling, & it seems to me, more use; at least in this particular, that his [sic] objects of Patronage are persons who neither from virtue nor talents were entitled to succeed without it, & therefore carry home less of moral effect […].
Source: Literature and Literati: The Literary Correspondence and Notebooks of Henry Mackenzie. Volume I: Letters 1766–1827, ed. by Horst W. Drescher (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1989), p. 257.
Notes: Addressed to George Home of Paxton and Wedderburn.

Journal Entry by Lord Byron.
6 Mar 1814.
On Tuesday last dined with Rogers,—Mad[am]e de Staël, Mackintosh, Sheridan, Erskine, and Payne Knight, Lady Donegall, and Miss R. there. Sheridan told a very good story of himself and M[ada]me de Recamier’s handkerchief; Erskine a few stories of himself only. She is going to write a big book about England, she says;—I believe her. Asked by her how I liked Miss [Edgeworth]’s thing called [Patronage], and answered (very sincerely) that I thought it very bad for her, and worse than any of the others.
Source: Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols (London: Murray, 1973–94), III, 247.

Diary Entry by Henry Crabb Robinson.
24 Apr 1814.
Spent the forenoon for a greater part at home finishing Miss Edgeworth’s Patronage, a novel containing very excellent and instructive sketches of life and character, but not highly interesting and frequently dull. There is a sort of Presbyterian gravity and goodness which run through the Percys. There are a family of Grandisons. The false and weak Falconers are a foil to the good people. The minister, Lord Oldborough, is the great excellence of the piece, though I am not certain that his character could sustain a critical investigation. He changes too much during the piece, or a least he appears to do so, from the man of pride and prejudice to the man of feeling. The other [140/141] characters are of a common stamp. The incidents, as is usual in Miss Edgeworth’s works, are not happily conceived, and all that respects legal characters and occurrences is unqualifiedly bad.
Source: Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers, ed. by Edith J. Morley, 3 vols (London: Dent, 1938), I, 140–41.

Diary Entry by Henry Crabb Robinson.
17 May 1814.
Read Miss Aikin’s Lorimer, a pleasing tale, with few incidents, but considerable interest is raised from those few. Her law is as unexceptionable as Miss Edgeworth’s is faulty, and she has introduced the embarrassment arising from a Scotch marriage with an effect that might have aided Sir Samuel Romilly in his speech in Cunningham and Cunningham before the Lords, in which [he] expatiated on the mischief arising from marriage by acknowledgement.
Source: Henry Crabb Robinson on Books and their Writers, ed. by Edith J. Morley, 3 vols (London: Dent, 1938), I, 143.
Notes: It is likely that Robinson is referring to Edgewroth’s Patronage (EN2 1814: 20), which was criticised for its attempts to depict the legal and medical professions. Lorimer is EN2 1814: 10.

Letter from Mary Russell Mitford to Sir William Elford.
4 June 1814.
A word about ‘Patronage’ and Miss Edgeworth. She has deviated, for the first time I believe in her life from her old and excellent rule of saying nothing of trees, rivers, mountains, and such branches of learning, and has treated us with a description of external nature, filched, I verily believe, from Mrs Radcliffe, in her account of ‘the hills’—‘rocks, fringed with mountain shrubs’—‘streams gushing on pebbly channels’—‘long narrow winding valleys and steeps crowned with wood.’ And all this in Hampshire! where certainly Miss Edgeworth can never have set her foot, and where gushing streams and rocky mountains are equally unknown.
Source: The Life of Mary Russell Mitford: Related in a Selection from her Letters to her Friends, ed. by A. G. L’Estrange, 3 vols (London: Bentley, 1870), I, 269.

Letter from Lord Byron to John Murray II.
24 July 1814.
Waverley is the best & most interesting novel I have redde [sic] since—I don’t know when—I like it as much as I hate Patronage & Wanderer—& O’donnel and all the feminine trash of the last four months.
Source: Byron’s Letters and Journals, ed. by Leslie A. Marchand, 13 vols (London: Murray, 1973–94), IV, 146.
Notes: Waverley is EN2 1814: 52; O’Donnel is EN2 1814: 41.

Letter from Jane Austen to Cassandra Austen.
24 Aug 1814.
[…] I must submit to seeing George Hampson, though I had hoped to go through Life without it.—It was one of my vanities, like your not reading Patronage.
Source: Le Faye, p. 271.
Notes: Letter is addressed from 23 Hans Place, London.

Letter from Walter Scott to Richard Lovell Edgeworth.
18 Feb 1815.
In my opinion the Absentee dans le meme genre fully equald if it did not exceed the Onwe and many passage of Patronage possess an interest more profound than either though as a whole the union of so many stories as were necessary to elucidate the important subject which Miss E. had chosen may injure in some degree the interest so far as it depends upon continuity of incident.
Source: Grierson, XII, 423; also see Millgate #3625.
Notes: Onwe is Scott’s phonetic spelling for ‘Ennui’, which with ‘The Absentee’ makes up Edgeworth’s Tales of Fashionable Life.

Letter from Anne Grant to Mrs Gorman.
16 July 1815.
Do you know that when I read Miss Edgeworth’s last novel, Patronage, though I did not then know you, I took it into my head from what I had heard of your brother’s intelligence and amenity, that she had him in her eye when describing the Chief Justice. I am far from thinking Patronage equal to her other works. Novelties never displace my old favourites, and Ennui has long had the first place in my affections: it is indeed incomparable.
Source: Memoir and Correspondence of Mrs Grant of Laggan, ed. by J. P. Grant, 3 vols (London: Longman, 1844), II, 96.
Notes: Addressed to Mrs Gorman of Kilmore, Ireland.

Journal Entries by Mary Shelley.
13 Oct 1816.
Read Patronage & the Milesian chief […].

14 Oct 1816.
Finish Milesian & Patronage […].
Source: The Journals of Mary Shelley 1814–1844, ed. by Paula R. Feldman & Diana Scott-Kilvert, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987), I, 141.
Notes: C. R. Maturin’s Milesian Chief is EN2 1812: 46.

Letter from Susan Ferrier to Lady Charlotte Bury.
Dec 1816.
I am now labouring very hard at ‘Patronage’, which, I must honestly confess, is the greatest lump of cold lead I ever attempted to swallow. Truth, nature, life, and sense, there is, I dare say, in abundance, but I cannot discover a particle of imagination, taste, wit, or sensibility; and without these latter qualities, I never could feel much pleasure in any book. In a novel, especially, such materials are expected, and, if not found, it is exceedingly disappointing to be made to pick a dry bone, when one thinks one is going to enjoy a piece of honeycomb. It is for this reason that I almost always prefer a romance to a novel.
Source: Lady Charlotte Bury, The Diary of a Lady-In-Waiting, ed. by A. F. Steuart, 2 vols (London: Lane, 1908), II, 176.

Diary Entry by Frances Burney D’Arblay.
[Feb?] 1817.
[Patronage] is replete with solid good sense; shews much real knowledge of the World, & has a large share of wit displayed in sundry acute & sagacious observations. But it is dull & [451/452] heavy as a whole, wanting interest, void of invention, trite in its Characters, wearisome in its dialogues, & spun out of all animating interest of narrative by shifting attention in almost equal parts to 7 or 8 different Objects. [The ‘too obvious design’ behind the moral lesson about the misuse of patronage undermines that lesson. D’Arblay, however, praises the character of Lord Olborough.] But the idle & unnecessary trite anecdote of finding him a Son & a Father’s Heart at the end, seems to me merely inserted to ward off the suspicion that he was painted after Lord Bute, or some other known statesman. The opening of the 4th volume upon mauvaise honte is admirable […]. But I see no motive, either from story, circumstance, example, moral, or interest, for making the Hero a Foreigner. Neither Virtue, Business, nor Misfortune bring [Count Altenberg] to England; he comes from common curiosity, & the Heroine sees him by common accident. He might just as well have been an Englishman &, if as well, better: for we should only look Abroad where some peculiarity of contrast, pathos, or Heroism answers some purpose, National or personal, that so only could be exemplified.
Source: The Journals and Letters of Fanny Burney (Madame D’Arblay), ed. by Warren Derry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), IX, 451–52.
Notes: This commentary is given under the heading ‘Books Read in 1817’. In the printed source, it appears between the diary entries for 22 & 26 Feb 1817, although the exact dating of this entry is not given.

Letter from Maria Edgeworth to Mrs Frances Edgeworth.
[Sept 1818].
[Edgeworth is describing a dinner party with Lord and Lady Lansdowne. Edgeworth arrived late to dinner, and reports on an awkward conversation with the Lansdownes.] […] believe me I was insufferably stupid and overpowered with remorse for being late and with the sense that all these people were averse to me as I knew they had been to Madame de Stael and were to Patronage etc. [87/88] You recollect that it was at a dinner at Lord Grenville’s that the lemon juice intercepted letters were discussed and reprobated.
Source: Maria Edgeworth: Letters from England 1813–1844, ed. by Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 87–88.
Notes: Lemon juice was used as invisible ink in letters in Patronage. Date in square brackets appears as given in the printed source.

Letter from Fanny Edgeworth to Mrs Frances Edgeworth.
19 June 1820.
Have we mentioned how much Patronage and Leonora are admired [? by those] who have read them. Hers and Walter Scotts works are read and talked of with the greatest interest by almost everybody.
Source: Maria Edgeworth in France and Switzerland. Selections from the Edgeworth family letters, ed. by Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 167.
Notes: Letter is addressed from Paris. Material in square brackets appears as given in the printed source. Edgeworth’s Leonora is EN2 1806: 29.

Letter from Maria Edgeworth to Mrs Margaret Ruxton.
5 Aug 1820.
Many very unexpected compliments on Patronage from a marquise from Dijon […]. [Edgeworth is introduced to a Prussian countess] Patronage again—which has found much more favor abroad than at home—Walter Scotts novels—as well known as in England—Ondine—admirably criticised….
Source: Maria Edgeworth in France and Switzerland. Selections from the Edgeworth family letters, ed. by Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), p. 200.
Notes: Letter is addressed from Pregny in Switzerland. The English translation of Undine (EN2 1818: 30) was published in 1818. Ellipses at end of the quotation are given as they appear in the printed source.

Letter from Maria Edgeworth to Mrs Frances Edgeworth.
14 Jan 1822.
[Edgeworth expresses her pleasure that Charles Kendal Bushe has become Chief Justice of the King’s Bench, Ireland.] Mrs. Bushe sent me through Anne Nangle a most kind message alluding to our Patronage second sight.
Source: Maria Edgeworth: Letters from England 1813–1844, ed. by Christina Colvin (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971), p. 318.
Notes: According to Colvin, Bushe served as the model for the Chief Justice in Patronage (p. 318, n. 1).

Memoirs by Anne Chalmers.
1823.
The next person of note I saw was Miss Edgeworth. I was then ten years old, living at Blochairn, where I found a copy of her Patronage which I devoured eagerly. […] I was then rather precocious, and thought these young ladies [at a dinner party with Edgeworth held by Chalmers’s father] wanted to play at very childish games with me, who had just read Patronage.
Source: Anne Chalmers, ‘Autobiographical Notes’ (1880); in The Scotswoman at Home and Abroad: Non-Fictional Writing 1700–1900, ed. by Dorothy McMillan (Glasgow: Association for Scottish Literary Studies, 1999), p. 198.

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