Letter from Maria Edgeworth, Edgeworthstown, to Wilkie Collins, 1849 April 22 : autograph manuscript signed.

Saying how much she and her family have enjoyed his book about his father, Memoirs of the Life of William Collins, Esq., R. A.; praising his approach as "not a eulogy [...] but making every reader of sense taste or feeling appreciate his merits fully both as an artist & as a man;" saying that she particularly values it as proof that "among artists there can be there has been friendship and cordial good will and sympathy" instead of "mean jealousy;" recounting her own fond memories of David Wilkie, who she met when she was staying with Lady Elizabeth Whitbread in Kensington Gore many years earlier; inviting Collins to visit them in Ireland; saying that she has never seen his father's illustrations for Sir Walter Scott's The Pirate and asking whether that volume can be purchased separately, as she can't indulge in purchasing the whole expensive set of Abbotsford Editions "[i]n our present Irish distressful poor-[rate?] state."