Castle Rackrent

An old Irish steward narrates four generations of the family he served — the drunkard, the litigant, the absentee, the fool — in his own voice, without once noticing what he is describing. Edgeworth helped run her father's estate in County Longford and published this in 1800, the year of the Union; Scott said it taught him how to write a nation. It is the first regional novel in English.