Fragmentary autograph manuscript. [Ireland, 1820s]. Two pages, about a third of a quarto sheet (128 x 200mm), written on spare paper from an unfinished letter (beginning "Dear Lovell"), endorsed on second page "Autograph of Maria Edgeworth obtained from Captn Beaufort," in a sheet of paper (watermarked 1829) with similar endorsement, addressed to Mrs Hill at 44 Chancery Lane. A good fragment of an attested autograph MS by Maria Edgeworth, obtained from "her Brother in law Captn Beaufort." Her father, Richard Lovell Edgeworth, married in 1797 (for the fourth time) Frances Anne Beaufort and had six further children. The donor is very probably Sir Francis Beaufort (1774-1857), the famous hydrographer and inventor of the Beaufort Scale, who was in fact the fourth Mrs Edgeworth's brother and thus — although six years younger than her — Maria's step-uncle rather than brother-in-law. ODNB records that even in her eighties Maria addressed her stepmother — who was actually a year or two younger than her — as "mother." The manuscript appears to consist of notes taken from a reading Holinshed's Chronicles, notably that section now (and indeed here) attributed to William Harrison, concentrating on the recent changes in domestic luxury England in the late 16th century.