在浪漫主義時期，瑪利亞．埃奇沃斯不僅小說享有名氣，她的教育論述和故事也大受歡迎。本文詳細探討埃奇沃斯《通俗故事》（1804）中的一篇東方故事〈不幸的穆拉〉。在這個故事中，教導人們普世善惡價值的舊文學傳統，與強調東西方本質差異的趨勢並存。這個故事正是薩伊德所說的「東方主義」文本的雛形：當東方文明的聲譽在英國江河日下之時，它體現這個過渡時期中不同東方論述的消長。本文解析埃奇沃斯取材著名的奇幻與東方文學鼻祖《天方夜譚》的手法，並指出其歧異在於對土耳其人的描寫，將主人翁穆拉塑造為迷信、懶惰、具鴉片毒癮的典型土耳其人。

Widely recognized as a successful novelist in the Romantic period, Maria Edgeworth also produced a number of well-received educational tracts and stories. This paper examines in detail the Oriental tale “Murad the Unlucky” in her Popular Tales (1804), maintaining that, in this story, the literary convention of inculcating general principles of vice and virtue coexists with a tendency of essentializing the East as the opposite of the West. As an emerging “Orientalist” text (in Edward Said’s terms), Edgeworth’s story exemplifies the wax and wane of different literary paradigms dealing with the Orient in this time of transition, when the prestige of Eastern civilization was on the decline in Britain. This paper analyzes Edgeworth’s engagement with the influential Arabian Nights to discuss the ways she draws on this fountainhead of Oriental tales and fantasy literature, and, in particular, where she differs from the Nights in characterising her Murad as representative of the supposedly superstitious, indolent, and opium-addicted Turks.