Critic Seamus Deane declares that Castle Rackrent ‘is … a work of startling incoherence’ and certainly, on the surface at least, it is a text that bears deeply the scars of the contextual upheavals of its creation. A major reason, if not the major reason, for Irish critics returning again and again to Castle Rackrent and its thematic and formal environs is the fortunate timing of its publication in 1800, coming as it does just two years after the violence of the 1798 rebellion and precisely at the moment when the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland came into being, formally and legislatively manifesting the colonial relationship between Ireland and Britain. Maria Edgeworth – in the guise of the editor in the Preface – knowingly links the novel to this moment of change, suggesting that ‘When Ireland loses her identity by a union with Great Britain, she will look back with good humoured complacency’ on the fecklessness of the Rackrent family. The title of the novel also operates in an overly historical fashion, determinedly directing the reader to a time ‘before the year 1782’: the year in which ‘Grattan's Parliament’ came into being, ushering in a modicum of independence in Irish political affairs. Deliberately employing such a pivotal date reinforces the notion that this is a novel connected to historical change and development.