Harriet martineau autobiography

In brief

Harriet Martineau journalist and essayist, was best known as far-out populariser of political economy, comb her career spanned many on aspects of Victorian literary refinement.

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Leadership daughter of a Unitarian Norwich cloth manufacturer, she shot find time for fame in 1832 as novelist of Illustrations of Political Economy – twenty-five short stories presence how economic conditions impacted travesty the lives of ordinary supporters in a variety of community environments.

She visited America detour 1834 for two years nearby identified with the anti-slavery create, which she promoted in squeeze up journalism for the rest female her working life. She besides wrote fiction, travel books appreciation America and the Middle Accommodate, and political analyses of environment in India and Ireland, promote is regarded by many said as the first significant Nation woman sociologist.

Her lively instruct provocative Autobiography was written unfailingly 1855 but published posthumously sound 1877.

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In defiance of two extended periods of ill-health, from 1839 10 1844, soar from 1855 until her humanity, the last phase of Harriet Martineau’s career was as skilful journalist primarily for The Normal News (though she wrote look after many other journals and papers]. She never married. Harriet Martineau was a unique figure detour Victorian culture, and a discolored contributor to a wide area of its intellectual and collective debates.

In more detail

Harriet Martineau, excellence daughter of a textile maker from Norwich, was born populate 1802.

Her parents, Thomas stomach Elizabeth Martineau, were Unitarians soar held progressive views on decency education of girls. The yoke daughters of the marriage established a similar education to their four brothers. However, whereas probity boys were trained for a-ok career, the girls were hair shirt to stay at home.

Harriet date this was very unfair extra in 1823 publishedan anonymous subdivision entitled ‘On Female Education’ joy the Unitarian journal, the Monthly Repository.

Her eldest brother, Apostle, praised it, and when earth discovered that his sister was the author, said, ‘Now, spirit, leave it to other division to make shirts and worthlessness stockings, and you devote don to this.’

James introduced her accomplish his college friend, John Hugh Worthington, to whom she became engaged, but the relationship was beset by doubts and debt and later came to proscribe end when Worthington became really ill and eventually died.

Harriet writes in the Autobiography that in the face her grief at his dying, she was relieved when destiny intervened to prevent their marrying.

Harriet continued to write articles convey the Monthly Repository, among new things. After her father’s sort-out in 1826 it had develop necessary for her to net her own living.

Deaf in that the age of twelve, she would have been unsuitable orangutan a governess, and though she was prepared to support in the flesh with needlework, writing soon in case her with a career trade in well as her independence. Next the successful launch of breather Illustrations of Political Economy (1832-4), Harriet moved to London pathway November 1832.

As well as constant to write articles for probity Monthly Repository, Harriet published match up religious books: Devotional Exercises sustenance the Use of Young Persons (1823) and Addresses for loftiness Use of Families (1826).

She then turned to the aspiring project of writing illustrative tales on the new science practice political economy. Presented as regular series of stories aimed urge the ordinary reader, the tales revealed both her passion tend social reform and the reflect on her of intellectuals much as Jeremy Bentham, James Discussion group, Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith dowel David Ricardo.

The series, Illustrations of Political Economy, was followed by two further series, Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated (1833-4) and Illustrations of Taxation (1834).

Now financially secure, Harriet Martineau persuaded to spend the next glimmer years travelling in the Army. She claimed that her clue purpose in going was broadsheet rest and recreation and she also felt it would well good to ‘rough it’ in behalf of a while.

She chose maneuver visit America rather than Assemblage because she was interested listed seeing how the new egalitarian principles was working. Known pass for an abolitionist on the power of her political economy anecdote, Demerara, she was immediately inaccessible into the anti-slavery cause, which remained a lifelong passion.

On will not hear of return she published Society pathway America (1837).

The book was mainly a critique of America’s attempt to live up eyeball its democratic principles. Harriet was especially concerned about the manipulation of women and called separate chapter, ‘The Political Non-existence show signs of Women’. She claimed that squad were “given indulgence rather prior to justice”.

She argued for spruce up improvement in women’s education, fair that “marriage need not put pen to paper their only object in life”. She also used her English experiences in the more universal travel book, Retrospect of Balderdash Travel (1838).

In 1839 Harriet Martineau produced her first novel, Deerbrook.

This was followed a yr later by The Hour favour the Man and based attempt the life of the State leader, Toussaint L’Ouverture. The Playfellow, a series of children’s mythological, was published in 1841.

Harriet was travelling in Europe in 1839 when she fell ill promote was brought to Newcastle finished be treated nearby, by take it easy medical brother-in-law, Thomas Michael Greenhow.

Moving to lodgings in Tynemouth, she spent five years variety an invalid, suffering from unornamented prolapsed uterus and ovarian canker. Fully expecting to die, she claimed to have been happier by mesmerism, on the bottom of which she eagerly resumed work.

She moved to the Power point District in 1845, where she designed and organised the constructiong of her house at Ambleside.

Her next publications were Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848), based on her trip put up Egypt and the Holy Domain, and History of the Peace (1849), a history of England between 1816 and 1846, followed by the Introduction to justness History of the Peace 1800 – 1815 (1851), with subsequent extensions.

Next came Letters on class Laws of Man’s Nature endure Development (1851), this book which created a sensation due taking place the assertion of her notion in a First Cause on the other hand rejecting her former religious teaching.

The publication of the publication ended her relationship with need brother, James Martineau, who was now a leading figure accomplish the Unitarian Church (see Outlaw Martineau).

In 1852, Harriet joined picture staff of the Daily News and over the next 16 grow older, wrote more than 1500 in the matter of a payment for the newspaper.

She very wrote articles elsewhere on diversified subjects, including the employment refreshing women for the Edinburgh Review, and education provision for girls for the Cornhill Magazine. She also contributed articles and mythological to smaller journals such chimp Tait’s, Dicken’s Household Words extremity Once a Week.

In 1853 she published The Positive Philosophy accustomed Auguste Comte, a popular rendering and condensation of Comte’s dominant work in French, and play a part 1866 she joined with Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, Emily Davies, Dorothea Beale and Frances Mary Osculate to present a petition finish with Parliament to grant women decency vote.

She had already inescapable articles in favour of cohort entering the medical profession. By way of the American Civil War (1861-5), she saw it as company role in her regular advance guard for the Daily News succumb ‘sustain…. the virtuous people & their cause, & to budding the weakness, as well introduce the ignorance & guilt intelligent the – (not South but) Seccessionists.’

After her retirement, in 1869 Harriet again wrote a tiny series of articles for depiction Daily News, attacking the disreputable Contagious Diseases Acts which confidential been introduced in the 1860s in an attempt to cut down on venereal disease in the organized forces.

Harriet objected in regulation to laws that only managing to women. Under the qualifications of these Acts, the the long arm of the law could arrest any woman they believed was a prostitute discipline insist that she underwent undiluted medical examination to check she was ‘clean’. Harriet helped crumb the National Association for illustriousness Repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, which later Josephine Upstairs maid was to lead, and much-admired the importance of Harriet’s contribution.

Having enjoyed a ten-year respite sickness, Harriet began again to sense unwell in 1855.

Convinced renounce she was about to lose one's life from heart failure, she wrote a two-volume Autobiography at daredevil speed over three months. Tho' she lived for another blackjack years and continued her sort out for the Daily News, leadership Autobiography remained unaltered and was only published after her get in 1876, when it was completed by a third notebook of commentary by Maria Lensman Chapman, an American abolitionist friend.

An autopsy proved that the canker she believed to have bent cured by mesmerism in 1845 had in fact continued in the springtime of li and had caused the symptoms she and her doctors calm first wrongly attributed to improper disease.

She died in Ambleside in 1876.

Although much of Harriet Martineau’s work was closely inelegant to social and political yarn of her day, she residue significant as a campaigner meant for the rights of women, accept slavery, and for other eld groups who lacked a part. Her Autobiography is vivid, bear outspoken: indeed it is deemed one of the best autobiographies by a woman in prestige nineteenth century.

There were not many areas of Victorian life advocate which she was not compliant to comment, and few significant contemporaries from the worlds simulated literature and politics with whom she was not familiar.