The untold story of the nineteenth-century novelist who outearned Jane Austen and wove provocative theories into her fiction—changing economics forever.
THE INVISIBLE HAND OF MARIA EDGEWORTH:
How a Nineteenth-Century Novelist Taught the World Economics
by Jeanna Smialek
Knopf, October2026
(via David Black Agency)
At the end of the eighteenth century, Europe faced revolutions, famine, and war. It was out of this chaos that the field of economics was born—and while that founding has for centuries been attributed almost entirely to men, they were only part of the story.
Maria Edgeworth, known to her contemporaries as “the Great Maria,” was one of the most important authors of the Regency era, envied by Lord Byron, admired by Jane Austen, and read avidly by the British royalty. But she was more than just a novelist and a society fixture: She was also a covert economist, working just after Adam Smith and alongside her friends David Ricardo and Thomas Malthus. As the earliest economists established their philosophies on production and investment, Edgeworth published dozens of stories, many with lessons on finance, society, and trade tucked into their plots. Through her fiction, Edgeworth delivered new ideas to a broader public, stretching the boundaries of what a woman of her time could achieve and captivating an empire in the process.
Here, her tale is told alongside those of the men—and women—who invented a field that would reshape our world. Lively and original, The Invisible Hand of Maria Edgeworth brings this astonishing woman and her world vividly to life and rewrites the origin story of modern economics.
“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
“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
Jeanna Smialek is the Brussels bureau chief at The New York Times. She has covered economic policy in one way or another since 2013, and is the author of Limitless, a book on the history and future of the Federal Reserve. She has previously written for Bloomberg News and Bloomberg Businessweek. A native of Pittsburgh, Smialek has spent most of her career in New York City and Washington, D.C., and now lives in Belgium with her husband.
In Richard Ford’s view, Jim Shepard’s “talent is so various and canny he can write about seemingly anything and make it thrilling to us,” and in these stories spanning six centuries we find viscerally evoked worlds as wildly diverse as a mercenary’s corner of 16th century Madrid, a young apprentice’s pre-Revolutionary Boston, and Edward Hyde’s London. With civil engineers and destitute veterans we encounter the devastating 1935 Labor Day hurricane in Florida, and we read the 1864 letters between Lucy in Boon, North Carolina (“Three privates are currently sleeping soundly on our porch in their muddy blankets”) and her great love, William, on the march in Tennessee (“I can’t write much for it seems we are looking for a fight every minute”), while the title story introduces us to the stubborn Constance, who had “no gift for flirtation” with men, preferring Minna, her best friend and “queen of bad influences,” as their vexed devotion unfolds in part on the liner Lusitania. 
If Jojo could erase her past, she would. At uni, she is constantly scared that someone will find out that she doesn’t belong there, and even her parents don’t really understand what she’s doing in her lab all day. When her former best friend Yara gets back in touch, Jojo thinks back to her sheltered youth in a dreary suburbia she couldn’t wait to leave, and radiant Yara, her only anchor in this confusing world – Yara in those green trainers of hers, who had an answer for everything and protected Jojo from a world that didn’t value girls. Jojo still doesn’t understand why Yara ghosted her after high school.