The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth

“Charming, engaging and highly instructive. . . . The Invisible Hand reads like a cross between Jane Eyre and a pop history of economic liberalism. . . . Smialek has tapped an important vein of scholarship on women in economics. . . . Even as a scholar in the field who has uncovered the contributions of women economists to the work of Milton Friedman, I found much that was new here.” —Jennifer Burns, New York Times Book Review

“Jeanna Smialek’s biography of Maria Edgeworth is a delight. Edgeworth was a woman of many parts, an Anglo-Irish novelist who outsold Jane Austen and befriended some of the founding fathers of economics like Malthus and Ricardo, becoming one of the first women to grapple seriously with their ideas, all against the backdrop of political turmoil across Ireland and Europe. A revealing, highly readable window into history.” —Liaquat Ahamed, author of Lords of Finance

“Jeanna Smialek, with the analytical rigor and narrative drive that made her one of the finest economics journalists of her generation, has rescued Maria Edgeworth from a historical amnesia that was, as this book makes clear, far from accidental. This is an impressive book about how ideas spread, how fields define themselves by deciding who belongs, and how much is lost when women are excluded from intellectual history.” —Janet Yellen, Former Chair of the Federal Reserve and United States Secretary of the Treasury

“Jeanna Smialek, a New York Times reporter who spent years translating the Federal Reserve for ordinary readers, is a fitting biographer for a woman who did the same for Adam Smith. Histories of economics usually feature its fathers, whom Smialek keeps as main characters, but the author focuses on the woman standing beside them who believed economics belonged to everyone.” —Julia R. Cartwright, The Washington Post

“Ms. Smialek makes the dismal science come alive with a journalist’s fluidity. The book shows Edgeworth as a gifted translator of economic ideas, carrying the arguments of Smith, Malthus and Ricardo to readers young and old who would never open a treatise.” —Diana Furchtgott-Roth, The Wall Street Journal

“Whoever thought economics could be such a joy to read? Maria Edgeworth may have written the novels, but Jeanna Smialek’s book brings them—and their world—to life. Take a fascinating voyage with Ricardo, Malthus, and Maria, from the age of the American, French, and Industrial revolutions to the Great Irish Famine, and learn some economics along the way.” —Claudia Goldin, Nobel Prize Laureate in Economics and author of Career and Family: Women’s Century-Long Journey Toward Equity

“In her smart, sprightly biography, The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth, journalist Jeanna Smialek reveals a novelist who was gifted at turning the real-world impact of economic policy into stories told with both humor and rigor.” —Mark Athitakis, Bloomberg

“Jane Austen, who once quipped that she would like no novels but Maria Edgeworth’s, her niece’s, and her own, has kept Edgeworth’s reputation for genius on life support since the nineteenth century. Now Jeanna Smialek shows us why Edgeworth deserves once again to be a household name. The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth makes a surprising, propulsive, and persuasive case for celebrating its fascinating subject as arguably the world’s first female economist.” —Devoney Looser, author of Wild for Austen: A Rebellious, Subversive, and Untamed Jane

“Revelatory and riveting—an original perspective on the history of economic thought that will change how you see today’s economy, and a pleasure to read from start to finish.” —Jason Furman, Professor of Economics at Harvard University and Former Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers

“A captivating story of Maria Edgeworth, who with her friend Jane Marcet was among the most celebrated writers on political economy of the nineteenth century, at a time of revolutionary change in the politics, language, and literary form of economic ideas.” —Emma Rothschild, author of Economic Sentiments: Adam Smith, Condorcet and the Enlightenment

“Lively biography of a woman who has been unjustly disappeared from the history of economics. . . . [Maria Edgeworth] emerges as a humane, politically aware thinker who deserves wider recognition, having been overlooked. . . . A welcome, and anything but dismal, contribution to the history of economics and 19th-century literature alike.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Smialek offers a vivid revisionist history of how classical economics went mainstream. . . . A stunning resurfacing of not only a remarkable life but of a long-forgotten, foundational perspective on the modern economic order.” —Publishers Weekly (starred)