The Gingerman, J.P. Donleavy, will officially open the third annual Maria Edgeworth Literary Weekend this year in the Co Longford village which bears the family name.
This year the occasion will be marked by the launch of the third volume of The Edgeworth Papers, a collection of poetry and short stories.
The weekend, from March 27th-29th, will feature lectures, readings and workshops arranged by the society which organises the event.
This year the organisers have arranged that top tutors will attend including Brian Leyden, John F. Deane, the former secretary general of the European Academy of Poetry, and Neil Donnelly, writer in association, Abbey Theatre, Dublin.
Others attending the weekend will include Laurence Foster, head of radio drama, RTE, Pat Boran, writer in residence, Dublin Corporation and Siobhan Parkinson, award-winning writer of children's fiction.
This year, the Edgeworth Lecture, which has become one of the highlights of the event, will be given by Prof Tom Dunne, of University College Cork.
The weekend will feature an open forum for established authors to perform and for new writers to read from their work as well.
The Tain exhibition of Louis le Brocquy prints will be on show and this is being sponsored by the Arts Council.
The Edgeworth family settled in Co Longford in 1583 and down the centuries produced notable people in the arts, science and politics. Among the eminent members of the family were Richard Lovell Edgeworth, the inventor, surveyor and educator who changed attitudes on education.
Less well known was Henry Essex Edgeworth, who was born in 1745 and died in 1807.
A grandson of Bishop Ussher of Armagh, he became a Roman Catholic in 1749 and settled in Toulouse where he became a priest and moved to Paris. He was confessor to the French royal family. Better known as Abbe de Firmont, he accompanied Louis XVI to his execution. The best-known member of the family is the novelist Maria, the Edgeworth after whom the weekend is named, whose most famous work is Castle Rackrent.
She is remembered still in the area for her activities during the Famine of 1847 when she worked among the poor to alleviate distress. She died, aged 82, in 1849.