Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
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,
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.
One critic argues that FK
equated her life on the stage with a kind of slavery and therefore developed a keen sympathy for those in bondage; however, the actual conditions of slavery were probably quite...
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...
Textual Production
Florence Nightingale
FN
corresponded with Harriet Martineau
, outlining the case against the goverment project which became the Contagious Diseases Acts.
Bishop, William John, and Sue Goldie. A Bio-Bibliography of Florence Nightingale. Dawsons for the International Council of Nurses, 1962.
106
Textual Production
Frances Isabella Duberly
Selina was to have a free hand about printing this letter in as many papers as she liked, but preferably including the Daily News (the paper of Charles Dickens
and Harriet Martineau
) or the Herald.
Textual Production
Lucie Duff Gordon
Aware now that her letters might reach published form, LDG
reflects in her writing more consciousness of the way she wanted to represent herself and her surroundings. Having read her second cousin Harriet Martineau
's...
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.
GE
discounts the puffery that women authors receive from critics, claiming that praise of women's work is in inverse proportion to their ability: But if they are inclined to resent our plainness of speech, we...
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...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eva Figes
Though she mentions such writers as Eliza Haywood
and Mary Davys
, she begins her detailed discussion with the 1790s (a time which twenty years on would be regarded as somewhat late in the history...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Eliza Cook
Eliza Cook's Journal takes the form of discrete essays by EC
and others; poems, too, were included. The language is informal and conversational, though a heavy use of quotation-marks for words or phrases deemed in...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Francesca Lady Wilde
It contains many previously published reviews and essays, including her thoughts on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century writers. In a review, JFLW
calls Harriet Martineauone of the cleverest female intellects of the age,
Wilde, Jane Francesca, Lady. Notes on Men, Women, and Books. Ward and Downey, 1891.
Here Kennedy argues that entertainment and enjoyment are valuable aims for the novel. She maintains that the novelist is, in essence, a storyteller, but the storyteller-novelist has been excluded by a literary society that devalues...
Theme or Topic Treated in Text
Jane Welsh Carlyle
Nor was she entirely charmed by her husband's lady admirers,
Carlyle, Jane Welsh. Letters and Memorials of Jane Welsh Carlyle. Editors Carlyle, Thomas and James Anthony Froude, Longmans, Green, 1883, 3 vols.
1: 66
though they make perfect fodder for her caricatures. To her close friend John Sterling
, Jane writes: You cannot fancy what a way...
Travel
Annie Keary
Their first base was Alexandria, but AK
also travelled a great deal. She rode out through the desert to visit the tombs of the Caliphs near Cairo, visited a harem (where she found...