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,
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.
"Harriet Martineau" Retrieved from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Harriet_Martineau_by_Richard_Evans.jpg/822px-Harriet_Martineau_by_Richard_Evans.jpg.
Among the Victorians, Harriet Martineau
concluded Female Education in The Monthly Repository of December 1822 (second part of her first published work) with a word of praise for Smith, and Margaret Gatty
as a young...
Intertextuality and Influence
Ali Smith
George is unaware of the spectre lingering about her and of the compelling similarities between her own history and that of the painter so important to her mother. Nevertheless a surveilling element persists in George's...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Mary Stott
Why, Stott wonders, do national newspapers print so few leading articles by women, when Harriet Martineau
was writing regular leaders for the Daily News back in the mid nineteenth century? Why has there never been...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Taylor
HT
's husband introduced her to the UnitarianMonthly Repository circle which included Harriet Martineau
, Eliza
and Sarah Flower
, and the Rev. William Fox
.
Rose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. Alfred A. Knopf, 1984.
103
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, 1990.
Textual Production
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
CET
published Mesmerism: A Letter to Miss Martineau (whose letters on this topic in the Athenæum had begun to appear on 23 November).
British Library Catalogue. http://explore.bl.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?dscnt=0&tab=local_tab&dstmp=1489778087340&vid=BLVU1&mode=Basic&fromLo.
Khorana, Meena, and Judith Gero John, editors. Dictionary of Literary Biography 163. Gale Research, 1996.
309
Textual Production
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Responding here to Martineau
's public interest in the healing powers of mesmerism, CET
writes with the purpose of saving Martineau's soul from this Satanic power.
Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth. Mesmerism. W. S. Martien, 1847.
7
She sums up her position on Mesmerism: by...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Flora Tristan
One chapter, entitled English Women, criticizes British social systems, and details the consequences women suffer because of the indissolubility of marriage.
Tristan, Flora. Flora Tristan’s London Journal, 1840. Translators Palmer, Dennis and Giselle Pincetl, Charles River Books, 1980.
FT
's The Life and Adventures of Michael Armstrong, the Factory Boy, possibly the first industrial novel, appeared with a date of 1840.
Texts that anticipate its interest in industrial relations include Harriet Martineau
Friends, Associates
Linda Villari
LV
and her husband were both friends of Vernon Lee
, accepting her hospitality and moving in the same circles.
Gunn, Peter. Vernon Lee: Violet Paget, 1856-1935. Oxford University Press, 1964.
96
Lee corresponded with LV
from the late 1870s to the early 1880s and discussed...
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Augusta Ward
MAW
's eldest child, Dorothy
, was born; Harriet Martineau
sent the baby a cot-blanket she had made.
Sutherland, John, b. 1938. Mrs. Humphry Ward. Clarendon Press, 1990.
59, 410
Ward, Mary Augusta. A Writer’s Recollections. Harper and Brothers, 1918.
298
Family and Intimate relationships
Mary Augusta Ward
From the time of her arrival in England, a major influence on the young Mary Arnold (later MAW
) was her aunt and godmother Jane Arnold
or Aunt K., a cultivated woman and friend...
Textual Production
Rosamund Marriott Watson
RMW
was by this time establishing a name for herself as an poet. In 1890 Elizabeth A. Sharp
included three of her poems in Women Poets of the Victorian Era. The anthology also features...
Friends, Associates
Julia Wedgwood
JW
visited Harriet Martineau
at her home, The Knoll, in Ambleside. They paid a call on Wordsworth
, whom Julia found conceited and disagreeable.
Wedgwood, Barbara, and Hensleigh Wedgwood. The Wedgwood Circle, 1730-1897: Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends. Studio Vista, 1980.
254
Wedgwood, Barbara, and Hensleigh Wedgwood. The Wedgwood Circle, 1730-1897: Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends. Studio Vista, 1980.
253-4
Reception
Julia Wedgwood
Harriet Martineau
replied to the eight-year-old JW
's letter; Julia had asked her mother
's permission to write to her friend to tell Martineau how much she enjoyed her stories.
Wedgwood, Barbara, and Hensleigh Wedgwood. The Wedgwood Circle, 1730-1897: Four Generations of a Family and Their Friends. Studio Vista, 1980.