Maria Edgeworth and the Telegraph

Richard Lovell Edgeworth’s plan to establish a permanent network of optical telegraphs across Ireland never materialized. Even so, the telegraph’s short life and literary and material afterlives merit attention, not least by scholars of Maria Edgeworth, whose participation in the scheme is under-acknowledged. This essay sketches the political and economic contexts of the Edgeworth telegraph’s development, taking into consideration Maria Edgeworth’s role in its public promotion in the years leading up to its brief establishment in Ireland, and highlighting the mediations involved in the extension of her father’s “telegraphic fame.” It suggests that the telegraph influenced Maria Edgeworth’s understanding of the transmission of character and “secret and swift intelligence” through print, but that the appearance of this technology in her tales also reflects a degree of caution about mechanical innovation and the democratization of scientific knowledge at a point of crisis in Europe. Finally, it indicates the need for further work on the Edgeworth telegraph’s colonial contexts, particularly in light of its redesign for use by the British East India Company in Bengal.