“Absent despite Similarities: Maria Edgeworth and the Irish Stage”

this paper addresses the issue of ‘absence’ in relation to the dramatic works of Maria Edgeworth. Indeed, until relatively recently, the absence of interest in Edgeworth’s plays was even more pronounced than the lack of recognition of her other more important literary works. The playwrights of the Abbey Theatre (W.B. Yeats, P. Colum, L. Robinson, A. Gregory and J.M. Synge) also neglected her work, notwithstanding its possible affinities with their own. The final part of the essay establishes a parallel between this lack of recognition and the fate of other Irish women playwrights of the twentieth century (A. Gregory, T. Deevy, C. Pakenham).