Sophie Gee

And she goes on to write two novels that I'm just going to briefly mention because they're incredibly interesting.

One of them is called Harrington.

And the thing that makes Harrington an important novel is that it's the first time someone depicted

wrote a novel about English Jews in the 18th century.

The novel is set in a brief period where Jewish worship, Jewish religious observation became legal.

It was, the event was the passing of the Jewish Naturalization Act in the

mid-century.

It was repealed after, I think, just a couple of decades.

But there's a brief period of increased freedom for Jews.

And Edgeworth sets her novel in this time.

And the reason she does it is that someone had complained about one of the early novels, that it was anti-Semitic.

And she took that really seriously.

And she set about trying to repair that damage.

And the other novel of Edgeworth's that I want to call out is Belinda from 1803, which is, I think, just an absolute rip-roarer of a novel.

I know that you like the first half of it too.

Yeah, the second half's not nearly as exciting, although I like the second half.

But the first half is absolutely incredible.

And to give a couple of teasers, it features a sort of menopausal woman who has injured her breast in a pistol duel where she was cross-dressed as a man.

And she believes that she is dying of breast cancer.

And there's this extraordinary scene.