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.
Intermittently from 1840 onwards, AAB
was subject to what she termed no end of manias and whims.
Woolley, Benjamin. The Bride of Science: Romance, Reason and Byron’s Daughter. Macmillan.
218
Deciding to use her illness as a grounds for scientific exploration and inspired by Harriet Martineau
's...
Health
Florence Nightingale
People in England became convinced that FN
was critically ill in Crimea; Harriet Martineau
composed an obituary celebrating her life and achievements.
Poovey, Mary. Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. University of Chicago Press.
164
Friends, Associates
Annie Keary
For years AK
's dearest wish was to become a friend of Harriet Martineau
, whose writing she immensely admired. Later, however, she began to feel there was something in Martineau's character or imagination that...
Before her marriage CN
had formed a friendship with the Irish poet Tom Moore
, once a crony of her famous grandfather; this friendship endured into her middle age. It was also as Richard Brinsley...
Friends, Associates
Mary Ann Kelty
Little is known of any literary contacts of MAK
. She met and became a friend of Barbara Hofland
, and in the early 1830s she sought [the] acquaintance by letter of Harriet Martineau
...
Lightbown, Ronald W., and Eliza Meteyard. “Introduction”. The Life of Josiah Wedgwood, Cornmarket Press.
The difficulties of social life for unattached women are visible in her regret and anxiety over...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Flower Adams
As her father
established himself socially and politically within the Dalston community, she became involved in London's literary and intellectual circles. Among those she met, William James Linton
, John Stuart Mill
, and...
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.
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.
Rose, Phyllis. Parallel Lives: Five Victorian Marriages. Alfred A. Knopf.
103, 105, 116
Friends, Associates
Eliza Fletcher
Hamilton, herself a conservative, set about de-demonizing EF
's political reputation. She had good success in persuading her friends that Mrs Fletcher was not the ferocious Democrat she had been represented, and that she neither...
Friends, Associates
Bessie Rayner Parkes
BRP
knew personally and corresponded with many of the Victorian intelligentsia. In addition to her Langham Place associates already mentioned, her literary friends and acquaintances included Matilda Hays
, Harriet Martineau
, Anthony Trollope
,...