Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Harriet Martineau
-
Standard Name: Martineau, Harriet
Birth Name: Harriet Martineau
Pseudonym: Discipulus
Pseudonym: A Lady
Pseudonym: H. M.
Pseudonym: From the Mountain
Pseudonym: An Invalid
Pseudonym: An Englishwoman
HM
began her career as a professional writer, which spanned more than four decades in the mid nineteenth century, with writing from a Unitarian perspective on religious matters. She made her name with her multi-volume series (initially twenty-five volumes, followed by further series) of narrative expositions of political economy. One of the founders of sociology, who believed that social affairs proceed according to great general laws, no less than natural phenomena,
Martineau, Harriet, and Gaby Weiner. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography. Virago.
2: 245
she produced several major contributions to this emerging field. She wrote broadly in periodicals and regularly for a newspaper on social and political issues, and produced three books of observations emerging from her foreign travels. Although her two three-volume novels were not particularly successful, her work had a great impact on later Victorian fiction. She also wrote history, biography, and household manuals. Her advocacy of mesmerism and her atheism made some of her later writings controversial. In her eminently readable autobiography and other writings she presents a cogent analysis of conditions shaping the lives of Victorian women. Although she became hugely influential—one of the most prominent women writers of her day—HM
eschewed notions of genius. Her crucial contribution to Victorian feminist thought has frequently been overlooked.
Chapman, Maria Weston, and Harriet Martineau. “Memorials of Harriet Martineau”. Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, James R. Osgood, pp. 2: 131 - 596.
The Eclectic Magazine once described her brand of feminism as less flighty than that of Frances Wright
and less senselessly radical than that of Harriet Martineau
(thus revealing a somewhat odd opinion of those two...
politics
Florence Nightingale
In early 1866 FN
signed John Stuart Mill
's petition for women's suffrage. She and Mill also exchanged a series of letters on the issue. Although she signed the petition, she thought that married women's...
politics
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
EBB
had showed a keen interest in women's issues from early in life, when she seems to have been for some time a devotee of Mary Wollstonecraft
. But she told Browning in 1845 that...
politics
Jessie Boucherett
An active suffragist, JB
helped (with a committee whose members included Harriet Martineau
, Frances Power Cobbe
and Mary Somerville
) to organize the suffrage petition presented to Parliament on 7 June.
Blain, Virginia et al., editors. The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press; Batsford.
politics
Caroline Norton
Thomas Noon Talfourd
gave notice early in 1837 of a House of Commons
motion on this subject, and the Bill was printed. But immediately after this CN
's husband relented and allowed her to see...
Occupation
Auguste Comte
AC
's work strongly influenced John Stuart Mill
, George Henry Lewes
, George Eliot
, and especially Harriet Martineau
, who produced an English translation and abridgement of the philosopher's work. AC
was concerned...
Occupation
Margaret Fuller
The Conversations were not without their critics, however. Maria Weston Chapman
, head of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery Society
, criticised them for failing to address abolition explicitly. Chapman may have influenced the opinion which...
Occupation
Mary Frances Billington
MFB
was earning enough from her career in journalism to be able to support herself by her late teens. She established herself as a successful writer and editor for national dailies and a career journalist...
Occupation
Lucy Toulmin Smith
Manchester College (now Harris Manchester College
) had a long and distinguished history as a Dissenting institution (including spells at York and London) before it moved to Oxford in 1889 and into new buildings...
Occupation
Herbert Spencer
Through his publications, such as Social Statics, Principles of Psychology, First Principles, and The Principles of Ethics, he founded evolutionary philosophy, an ethical system that expounded individualism. Its application of the...
Occupation
Robert Browning
RB
began his literary career as a poet inauspiciously with Pauline (1833), but with Paracelsus (1835) began to achieve some critical success. He entered literary society under the patronage of W. J. Fox
, and...
Literary responses
Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, first Baron Lytton
He praised Grace Aguilar
's Exposition of Zanoni, which he mentioned in the introduction to a new edition. He claimed that she and Harriet Martineau
had provided the most valuable criticism of the work.
Drabble, Margaret, editor. The Oxford Companion to English Literature. Oxford University Press.
Crosland, Camilla. Landmarks of a Literary Life, 1820-1892. Charles Scribner’s Sons.
176
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
She is discussed as one of a group of British women who travelled or settled in the USA (along with Fanny Kemble
, Frances Trollope
, Harriet Martineau
, Isabella Bird
, and the diarist...