What's Luck Got to Do With It?: Reading the East in Maria Edgeworth's "Murad the Unlucky"

  • Colleen Booker University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

Abstract

This article on Maria Edgeworth's short story "Murad the Unlucky" may seem out of place in this issue devoted to magic realism and fantasy. However, the juxtaposition of the real and the fantastic and the idea of being a skilled reader of signs that Colleen Booker explores here is echoed in this issue's other articles: how to read magic realism within children's literature; how to read fantastic phenomena within a realistic setting; how to read gender in texts; how to read signs within a text to gain larger social insights. Booker's careful discussion of Edgeworth's political, social, and economic concerns behind the writing of "Murad the Unlucky" sheds an important light on an often-overlooked tale.

Author Biography

Colleen Booker, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Cavid Beagley is Lecturer in Children's Literature and Literacy at La Trobe University's Bendigo campus, Victoria, Australia, where he teaches units in Genres, History, Australian and Post-colonial children's literature. He has previously taught in secondary schools, and has been a school and university librarian.
Published
2008-12-09
Section
Alice's Academy