2 Maria Edgeworth first editions are documented on this shelf, from Castle Rackrent: An Hibernian Tale (1800) to Belinda (1801). Each linked guide gives the points of issue that separate a true first printing of that Maria Edgeworth title from later printings and book-club copies — the publisher and year to expect, the number-line or edition-statement conventions, and the tells that show up in online listings.

Identification only, per the house rule: no prices and no appraisals here. Checking a Maria Edgeworth copy in hand? Type the title into the First-Edition Checker or photograph the copyright page with Snap & Sort.

Castle Rackrent: An Hibernian Tale — 1800 · J. JohnsonFirst edition, published anonymously in January 1800 by Joseph Johnson (J. Johnson) of St. Paul's Church-Yard, London; no author's name or edition statement appears on the title page. Shortly before publication, an English-narrator's introduction, glossary, and explanatory footnotes were added to the text to soften potential offense to English readers ahead of the 1800 Act of Union, and their presence throughout…. A rival Johnson printing from the same year is explicitly titled 'The Second Edition. 1800' on its own title page; genuine first-edition copies carry no edition statement at all, so the presence or absence of that phrase is the key precedence point between the two 1800 printings. The second edition of 1811 was the first printing to carry Maria Edgeworth's name on the title page; both 1800 printings (the true first edition and the same-year second edition) were issued anonymously.
Belinda — 1801 · J. JohnsonFirst edition, three volumes, advertised in the London Courier and Evening Gazette of 6 June 1801 as issued 'in 3 vols., in boards' by J. Johnson. A genuinely checkable textual identification point distinguishes the first (1801) and second (1802) edition text from later printings: in the first two editions the Black servant character Juba marries the English farm-girl Lucy, and Belinda comes close to accepting a…. The 1810 third edition and its descendants carry the revised Juba/Lucy and Vincent plot points described above; the original 1801-02 text (Juba marrying Lucy; Belinda nearly accepting Vincent) survives only in first- and second-edition printings.

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