Harriet Martineau

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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, 1983, 2 vols.
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, 1877, pp. 2: 131 - 596.
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Connections

Connections Sort descending Author name Excerpt
Literary responses Ellen Wood
The Athenæum's review by Lena Eden called East Lynneone of the best novels published for a season.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1772 (1861): 473
The novel was well reviewed in the Daily News and Saturday Review as...
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. 5th ed., Oxford University Press, 1985.
Crosland, Camilla. Landmarks of a Literary Life, 1820-1892. Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1893.
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.
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
Miss Aikin's Poems sold five hundred copies in just over four months, and the second edition sold a similar number in a similar period. In September a third edition was announced.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
111
The Monthly Review...
Literary responses Fredrika Bremer
Its reception both in England and Sweden, beginning with the journals which published it, was largely hostile or disapproving: FB was seen as a woman stepping out of her sphere. The Times printed her Invitation...
Literary responses Jane Williams
A short review in the Athenæum remarked that the idea of the book is good and droll but that it is carried too far—very much too far. Referring to Harriet Martineau 's theories of population...
Literary responses Catherine Hubback
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...
Literary responses Anna Letitia Barbauld
Literary admirers of the hymns included Hannah More , Anna Seward , and Elizabeth Carter , who found some passages amazingly sublime.
McCarthy, William. Anna Letitia Barbauld, Voice of the Enlightenment. The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008.
193
The innumerable children who loved and later remembered them included Mary Anne Schimmelpenninck
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 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...
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 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 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...
politics Caroline Frances Cornwallis
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...

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