This edition offers a selection of five short fictions by More, Opie, and Edgeworth-the best-known writers of the moral tale-prefaced by a critical introduction to the genre and its place in the complex and fascinating debates surrounding the writing and reading of fiction in the Romantic period. The volume concludes with a variety of background materials that help situate the moral tale in its late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literary contexts, including moral tales for children, theories of education, and contemporary reviews.