Evidence of Maria Edgeworth's influence in the Romantic period includes the fact that she could count Walter Scott and Jane Austen among her admirers. At the end of Waverley (1814), Scott stated that he ventured to “emulate the admirable Irish portraits drawn by Miss Edgeworth,” to whom in the general preface to the 1829 edition he referred as his “accomplished friend.” Austen's admiration of Edgeworth is also well-documented; for example, in a letter to her niece, Anna Austen Lefroy, dated September 1814, Austen wrote, “I have made up my mind to like no novels really but Miss Edgeworth’s, yours, and my own.” In Northanger Abbey (1818), Austen's defense of women novelists commended Edgeworth's Belinda (1801). A wide breadth of scholarship on Edgeworth has examined not only her influence on writers like Scott and Austen, but also the ingenuity and veracity of her work covering topics including colonialism, education, genre, gender, and childhood. However, there remains a lacuna that this essay will address: no sustained examination exists of how Wales figures in Maria Edgeworth's work.

By the Romantic period Wales had been effectively vanquished by England, yet the Welsh language had survived Acts of Union made between 1536 and 1543. Geraint H. Jenkins has pointed out that in early nineteenth-century Wales “nine of every ten inhabitants were still monoglot Welsh speakers to all intents and purposes, and both to insiders and outsiders the native tongue was the most tangible badge of difference.” Its language then, made Wales somewhat independent and exotic. Adding to Wales's allure was its Romantic scenery—rugged mountains and secluded woods—which made the country both an increasingly popular tourist destination and rural retreat. The latter was certainly on Jean Jacques Rousseau's mind when he became intent on settling in Wales during his stay in Britain.

Maria Edgeworth no doubt thought about Wales when she lived close by in Clifton (near Bristol) from 1791 to 1793, and when she traveled through Wales from the ports where ferries from Ireland docked.