In Ormond (1817), the eponymous hero’s journey from placeless orphan to ‘estated gentleman’ involves experiences that combine local attachment, transnational influences and, ultimately, an imperial inheritance. The novel’s deft weaving of these contexts in the form of a Bildungsroman reflects Edgeworth’s recurring preoccupation with the interplay of the local and the global as powerful drivers of change in late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century Ireland. This paper will locate its reading of the novel within the context of Edgeworth’s work more broadly, as well as considering its place within critical debates on the imperial and colonial dimensions of the novel in this period.