It preceded Miss Austen's work in publication, and is specially cited by her as a capital example of novel in connection with the work of Miss Burney: and it is evidently founded on study of the latter, of which, indeed, it is the first really worthy continuation.

Maria has nothing so good as Fanny's Smiths and Branghtons: but the whole book is far superior to _Evelina_.

The extravagance of the _fin-de-siecle_ society which it represents has probably disguised from not a few readers who do not know the facts, the other fact that it is a real attempt at realist observation of manners: and it has the narrative merit which was Miss Edgeworth's gift of nature.

But the hero is patchy and improbable: the heroine, a good and quite possible girl, is not sufficiently "reliefed out"; and the most important figures of the book, Lord and Lady Delacour, almost great successes, are not helped by the peculiar academic-didactic moralising which she had caught from Marmontel.
The following of that ingenious and now too much under-valued writer stood her in better stead in the _Moral Tales_ (1801) (which she deliberately called after his[16]), the _Popular Tales_ of the same kind, and (though Marmontel did not intentionally write for children) the delightful _Parent's Assistant_ (1801) and _Frank_.

In the two first-named divisions, the narrative faculty just mentioned appears admirably, together with another and still greater gift, that of character-painting, and even a grasp of literary and social satire, which might not be anticipated from some of her other books.