The Forgotten Godmother of Economic Literature

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In 1776, the field of economics was born with the publication of Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations . And among the book's earliest readers, and most ardent advocates, was a Regency-era novelist named Maria Edgeworth. In her time, Edgeworth was one of the most famous literary figures in England, and she smuggled into her stories economic concepts and debates around rent seeking, the idea of productive labor, and so on. These works were enormously influential and they helped expose a generation…