Maria Edgeworth was born at Black Bourton, Oxfordshire, the second child of Richard Lovell Edgeworth and Anna Maria Edgeworth née Elers and thus an aunt of Francis Ysidro Edgeworth. On her father's second marriage in 1773, she went with him to Ireland, where she eventually was to settle on his estate, Edgeworthstown, in County Longford. There, she mixed with the Anglo-Irish gentry, particularly Kitty Pakenham (later the wife of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington), Lady Moira, and her aunt Margaret Ruston of Black Castle.