Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Harriet Martineau" - New World
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==Early Life== | ==Early Life== | ||
| − | Martineau was born in Norwich, England to a family of Huguenot extraction that professed Unitarian views. The atmosphere of her home was industrious, intellectual and austere. Martineau herself was very clever, but battled a lifetime of physical ailments leaving her without a sense of taste or smell. In her youth Martineau would also grow deaf, having to rely on an ear trumpet. At the age of fifteen, Harriett’s declining health led to a prolonged visit with her father's sister who kept a school at Bristol. Here, in the companionship of amiable and talented people, Martineau’s life would become much happier | + | Martineau was born in Norwich, England to a family of Huguenot extraction that professed Unitarian views. The atmosphere of her home was industrious, intellectual and austere. Martineau herself was very clever, but battled a lifetime of physical ailments leaving her without a sense of taste or smell. In her youth Martineau would also grow deaf, having to rely on an ear trumpet. At the age of fifteen, Harriett’s declining health led to a prolonged visit with her father's sister who kept a school at Bristol. Here, in the companionship of amiable and talented people, Martineau’s life would become much happier. Martineau soon fell under the influence of the Unitarian minister Doctor Lant Carpenter, from whose instructions she claimed to derive "an abominable spiritual rigidity and a truly respectable force of conscience strangely mingled together." After two years in Bristol, Martineau returned to Norwich, her deafness finally confirmed by age twenty. In 1821, Harriett began to write anonymously for the ''Monthly Repository'', a Unitarian periodical, and in 1823, at the age of twenty-one she would publish her first work entitled ''Devotional Exercises and Addresses, Prayers and Hymns''. |
| − | In 1826, Martineau’s father | + | In 1826, Martineau’s father died, his death preceded by that of his eldest son and soon followed by the death of a man to whom Harriet was engaged. The situation left a bare maintenance to Harriett’s mother and sisters, and soon thereafter the family would lose all of their financial means. Harriett, precluded by deafness from teaching, began reviewing articles for the ''Monthly Repository'' while contributing short stories to the establishment. In 1830 she would gain three essay prizes from the Unitarian Association, and supplement her growing income by needlework. In 1831, Martineau sought a publisher for a collection of economic works entitled ''Illustrations of Political Economy'', Selecting Charles Fox, Martineau’s sale of her first series was immediate and enormous. Demand would increase with each publication to follow and secure Martineau’s literary success from that point forward. |
| − | ==London and the | + | ==Later Life == |
| + | In 1832, Martineau moved to London where she numbered among her acquaintances; Henry Hallam, Henry Hart Milman, Thomas Malthus, Monckton Milnes, Sydney Smith, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and later Thomas Carlyle. There Martineau continued with her series on political economy and began a supplemental collection entitled Illustrations of Taxation, a series supporting the British Whig Party’s Poor Law reforms. The practically effective collection written in a direct, lucid manner without any appearance of effort displayed the characteristics of Martineau’s controversial style. Tory paternalists reacted by calling her a Malthusian "who deprecates charity and provision for the poor". British radicals were equally opposed. | ||
| − | In | + | In 1834, with the series complete, Martineau traveled to the United States. There her open adhesion to the Abolitionist party, then small and very unpopular, gave great offence, which was later deepened by the 1837 publication of ''Theory and Practice of Society in America'' and the 1838 ''Retrospect of Western Travel''. Her later article, "The Martyr Age of the United States," published in the ''Westminster Review'', introduced English readers to the struggles of American Abolitionists. |
| − | In | + | ===Charles Darwin=== |
| + | In October of 1836, Charles Darwin visited with his brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin, and found Eras spending his days with the eloquent Martineau. The Darwins shared her Unitarian background and Whig politics, though their father Robert remained concerned that as a potential daughter-in-law, Martineau’s politics were too extreme. Their father was upset by a piece he read in the ''Westminster Review'' calling for the radicals to break with the Whigs and give working men the vote "before he knew it was not hers, and wasted a good deal of indignation." | ||
| − | In | + | Charles would remark that Martineau “was very agreeable, and managed to talk on a most wonderful number of subjects". In his private papers, Darwin also commented; "I was astonished to find how ugly she is" and added how "she is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and abilities", though brother "Erasmus palliated all this, by maintaining one ought not to look at her as a woman." For her part, Martineau described Charles as "simple, childlike” and “painstaking". After a later meeting during which Darwin began to struggle with his own writing, he expressed sincere astonishment at the ease with which Martineau wrote such fluent prose, and remarked that he "never has occasion to correct a single word she writes", though she was "not a complete Amazonian, & knows the feeling of exhaustion from thinking too much." |
| − | + | In 1839 Martineau published a three volume novel entitled ''Deerbrook'', a story of middle class country life surrounding a surgeon hero. During this same period Martineau published a number of handbooks, forming a ''Guide to Service''. The veracity of her later ''Maid of All Work'' led to a widespread belief, which she regarded with some complacency, that she had once been a maid of all work herself. | |
| − | In 1839 Martineau | + | ===Mesmerism=== |
| + | In an 1839 visit to Continental Europe, Martineau's health began to break down. Fearing the worst, she retired to solitary lodgings in Tynemouth near her sister and brother-in-law, a celebrated Newcastle surgeon. During this time, Martineau would publish ''The Hour and the Man'', ''Life in the Sickroom'', and the ''Playfellow'', while also embarking on a series of tales for children including ''Settlers at Home'', ''The Peasant and the Prince'', and ''Feats on the Fiord''. During her illness, for a second time, Martineau declined a pension on the civil list, fearing it would compromise her political independence. | ||
| − | In | + | In 1844, Martineau underwent a course of mesmerism, and found herself restored to health within a few months. She eventually published an account of her case, causing much discussion, in sixteen ''Letters on Mesmerism''. The publication of her account lead to considerable disagreement with her surgeon brother-in-law and in 1845 she would leave Tynemouth for Ambleside, a town in the Lake District, where she built herself "The Knoll". This home would become the house in which the greater part of her later life was spent. |
| − | == | + | ==Publications== |
| − | In | + | In 1845, Martineau published three volumes of ''Forest and Game Law Tales''. One year later, after touring regions of Egypt, Palestine and Syria, Martineau would publish ''Eastern Life, Present and Past'' (1848). This travelogue would depict a progressively abstract and indefinite conception of a Deity and of a Divine government throughout the Eastern World, and professed an ultimate belief of philosophic atheism. The piece argued that Christian beliefs, in reward and punishment, were based on Pagan superstitions. Describing an ancient tomb of an unknown Egyptian, Martineau wrote "How like ours were his life and death!.. Compare him with a retired naval officer made country gentleman in our day, and in how much less do they differ than agree!" The book's "infidel tendency" was too much for publisher John Murray, who rejected it. |
| − | + | Following her Eastern travels, Martineau published a ''Household Education'' which expounded the theory that freedom and rationality, rather than command and obedience, were the most effectual instruments of education. Her interest in schemes of instruction inspired her to launch a series of lectures, addressed at first to the school children of Ambleside, but later extended per request to the town elders. Lecture subjects included sanitary principles and practice, the histories of England and North America, and reflections of her Eastern travel. | |
| − | + | ===Atkinson and Philosophical Atheism=== | |
| + | In March of 1851, Martineau edited a volume entitled ''Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development'', its form that of a correspondence between herself and the self-styled scientist Henry G. Atkinson. The volume expounded the doctrine of philosophical atheism to which Martineau depicted in her ''Eastern Life''. Atkinson, like Martineau, was a zealous exponent of mesmerism. The publication’s emphasis on mesmerism and clairvoyance heightened the general disapprobation of the book, which outraged literary London and caused a lasting division between Martineau and some colleagues. | ||
| − | == | + | ===Auguste Comte and Sociology=== |
| + | In 1853, Martineau undertook the translation of the French philosopher Auguste Comte’s six volume ''Cours de Philosophie Positive'', a publication laying the foundations for what would become the field of sociology. In two volumes, Martineau would publish "The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte: freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau”, a remarkable yet difficult achievement. Soon after Comte himself would recommend these volumes to his students instead of his own. To date, many writers regard Martineau herself as the first female sociologist. Citing her introduction of Comte to the English-speaking world and the elements of sociological perspective that may be found in her original writing, sociologists worldwide often argue for her recognition as a kindred spirit if not a significant contributor to the sociological field. | ||
| − | + | ==Contributions== | |
| + | In 1853, Martineau published a condensed English language version of the ''Philosophie Positive''. Between 1852 and 1866, she contributed regularly to England’s ''Daily News'' and would submit her ''Letters from Ireland'', a short series written during a visit to that country in the summer of 1852. For many years, Martineau worked as a contributor to the ''Westminster Review'', and was one of few supporters whose pecuniary assistance in 1854 prevented the establishment’s extinction or forced sale. In early 1855, Martineau found herself suffering from heart disease and soon thereafter began to construct her autobiography. Her life, which she feared to be so near its close, would be prolonged for nearly twenty years after. | ||
| − | + | Aside from her literary success, Martineau cultivated and maintained a tiny farm at Ambleside, and helped to sustain many of her poorer neighbors. Her busy life bore the consistent impress of two leading characteristics; industry and sincerity. | |
| − | + | When Darwin's ''The Origin of Species'' was published in 1859, Erasmus Darwin sent a copy to Martineau. At the age of 58, she was continuing to review literature from her home in the Lake District and sent her thanks to Erasmus, adding that she had previously praised "the quality & conduct of [Charles’] mind” but that it was “an unspeakable satisfaction to see here the full manifestation of its earnestness & simplicity, its sagacity, its industry, & the patient power by which it has collected such a mass of facts". To her fellow Malthusian George Holyoake, she wrote, "What a book it is! …The range and mass of knowledge take away one's breath." | |
| − | + | On June 27, 1867, Martineau would die at her home, "The Knoll". Her obituary, published by the “Daily News” was one endorsed by posterity, having been selected from her own autobiographical sketches. Of herself, Martineau would write, "Her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a dear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularize while she could neither discover nor invent." | |
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==References== | ==References== | ||
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*Mrs. Fenwick Miller, ''Harriet Martineau'' (1884, "Eminent Women Series"). | *Mrs. Fenwick Miller, ''Harriet Martineau'' (1884, "Eminent Women Series"). | ||
*Paul L. Riedesel, "Who Was Harriet Martineau?". ''Journal of the History of Sociology'', vol. 3, 1981. Pp.63-80. | *Paul L. Riedesel, "Who Was Harriet Martineau?". ''Journal of the History of Sociology'', vol. 3, 1981. Pp.63-80. | ||
| − | + | *Papers relating to Harriet Martineau are held in the [[University of Birmingham]]'s Special Collections. | |
| − | Papers relating to Harriet Martineau are held in the [[University of Birmingham]]'s Special Collections. | ||
| − | |||
{{Credit1|Harriet_Martineau|71840401|}} | {{Credit1|Harriet_Martineau|71840401|}} | ||
Revision as of 23:02, 21 September 2006
Harriet Martineau, (June 12, 1802 - June 27, 1876) was an esteemed writer, publisher and traveled philosopher. A woman of progressive education, Martineau is often remembered for her early contributions to the present state of sociological study.
Early Life
Martineau was born in Norwich, England to a family of Huguenot extraction that professed Unitarian views. The atmosphere of her home was industrious, intellectual and austere. Martineau herself was very clever, but battled a lifetime of physical ailments leaving her without a sense of taste or smell. In her youth Martineau would also grow deaf, having to rely on an ear trumpet. At the age of fifteen, Harriett’s declining health led to a prolonged visit with her father's sister who kept a school at Bristol. Here, in the companionship of amiable and talented people, Martineau’s life would become much happier. Martineau soon fell under the influence of the Unitarian minister Doctor Lant Carpenter, from whose instructions she claimed to derive "an abominable spiritual rigidity and a truly respectable force of conscience strangely mingled together." After two years in Bristol, Martineau returned to Norwich, her deafness finally confirmed by age twenty. In 1821, Harriett began to write anonymously for the Monthly Repository, a Unitarian periodical, and in 1823, at the age of twenty-one she would publish her first work entitled Devotional Exercises and Addresses, Prayers and Hymns.
In 1826, Martineau’s father died, his death preceded by that of his eldest son and soon followed by the death of a man to whom Harriet was engaged. The situation left a bare maintenance to Harriett’s mother and sisters, and soon thereafter the family would lose all of their financial means. Harriett, precluded by deafness from teaching, began reviewing articles for the Monthly Repository while contributing short stories to the establishment. In 1830 she would gain three essay prizes from the Unitarian Association, and supplement her growing income by needlework. In 1831, Martineau sought a publisher for a collection of economic works entitled Illustrations of Political Economy, Selecting Charles Fox, Martineau’s sale of her first series was immediate and enormous. Demand would increase with each publication to follow and secure Martineau’s literary success from that point forward.
Later Life
In 1832, Martineau moved to London where she numbered among her acquaintances; Henry Hallam, Henry Hart Milman, Thomas Malthus, Monckton Milnes, Sydney Smith, Edward George Bulwer-Lytton, and later Thomas Carlyle. There Martineau continued with her series on political economy and began a supplemental collection entitled Illustrations of Taxation, a series supporting the British Whig Party’s Poor Law reforms. The practically effective collection written in a direct, lucid manner without any appearance of effort displayed the characteristics of Martineau’s controversial style. Tory paternalists reacted by calling her a Malthusian "who deprecates charity and provision for the poor". British radicals were equally opposed.
In 1834, with the series complete, Martineau traveled to the United States. There her open adhesion to the Abolitionist party, then small and very unpopular, gave great offence, which was later deepened by the 1837 publication of Theory and Practice of Society in America and the 1838 Retrospect of Western Travel. Her later article, "The Martyr Age of the United States," published in the Westminster Review, introduced English readers to the struggles of American Abolitionists.
Charles Darwin
In October of 1836, Charles Darwin visited with his brother Erasmus Alvey Darwin, and found Eras spending his days with the eloquent Martineau. The Darwins shared her Unitarian background and Whig politics, though their father Robert remained concerned that as a potential daughter-in-law, Martineau’s politics were too extreme. Their father was upset by a piece he read in the Westminster Review calling for the radicals to break with the Whigs and give working men the vote "before he knew it was not hers, and wasted a good deal of indignation."
Charles would remark that Martineau “was very agreeable, and managed to talk on a most wonderful number of subjects". In his private papers, Darwin also commented; "I was astonished to find how ugly she is" and added how "she is overwhelmed with her own projects, her own thoughts and abilities", though brother "Erasmus palliated all this, by maintaining one ought not to look at her as a woman." For her part, Martineau described Charles as "simple, childlike” and “painstaking". After a later meeting during which Darwin began to struggle with his own writing, he expressed sincere astonishment at the ease with which Martineau wrote such fluent prose, and remarked that he "never has occasion to correct a single word she writes", though she was "not a complete Amazonian, & knows the feeling of exhaustion from thinking too much."
In 1839 Martineau published a three volume novel entitled Deerbrook, a story of middle class country life surrounding a surgeon hero. During this same period Martineau published a number of handbooks, forming a Guide to Service. The veracity of her later Maid of All Work led to a widespread belief, which she regarded with some complacency, that she had once been a maid of all work herself.
Mesmerism
In an 1839 visit to Continental Europe, Martineau's health began to break down. Fearing the worst, she retired to solitary lodgings in Tynemouth near her sister and brother-in-law, a celebrated Newcastle surgeon. During this time, Martineau would publish The Hour and the Man, Life in the Sickroom, and the Playfellow, while also embarking on a series of tales for children including Settlers at Home, The Peasant and the Prince, and Feats on the Fiord. During her illness, for a second time, Martineau declined a pension on the civil list, fearing it would compromise her political independence.
In 1844, Martineau underwent a course of mesmerism, and found herself restored to health within a few months. She eventually published an account of her case, causing much discussion, in sixteen Letters on Mesmerism. The publication of her account lead to considerable disagreement with her surgeon brother-in-law and in 1845 she would leave Tynemouth for Ambleside, a town in the Lake District, where she built herself "The Knoll". This home would become the house in which the greater part of her later life was spent.
Publications
In 1845, Martineau published three volumes of Forest and Game Law Tales. One year later, after touring regions of Egypt, Palestine and Syria, Martineau would publish Eastern Life, Present and Past (1848). This travelogue would depict a progressively abstract and indefinite conception of a Deity and of a Divine government throughout the Eastern World, and professed an ultimate belief of philosophic atheism. The piece argued that Christian beliefs, in reward and punishment, were based on Pagan superstitions. Describing an ancient tomb of an unknown Egyptian, Martineau wrote "How like ours were his life and death!.. Compare him with a retired naval officer made country gentleman in our day, and in how much less do they differ than agree!" The book's "infidel tendency" was too much for publisher John Murray, who rejected it.
Following her Eastern travels, Martineau published a Household Education which expounded the theory that freedom and rationality, rather than command and obedience, were the most effectual instruments of education. Her interest in schemes of instruction inspired her to launch a series of lectures, addressed at first to the school children of Ambleside, but later extended per request to the town elders. Lecture subjects included sanitary principles and practice, the histories of England and North America, and reflections of her Eastern travel.
Atkinson and Philosophical Atheism
In March of 1851, Martineau edited a volume entitled Letters on the Laws of Man's Nature and Development, its form that of a correspondence between herself and the self-styled scientist Henry G. Atkinson. The volume expounded the doctrine of philosophical atheism to which Martineau depicted in her Eastern Life. Atkinson, like Martineau, was a zealous exponent of mesmerism. The publication’s emphasis on mesmerism and clairvoyance heightened the general disapprobation of the book, which outraged literary London and caused a lasting division between Martineau and some colleagues.
Auguste Comte and Sociology
In 1853, Martineau undertook the translation of the French philosopher Auguste Comte’s six volume Cours de Philosophie Positive, a publication laying the foundations for what would become the field of sociology. In two volumes, Martineau would publish "The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte: freely translated and condensed by Harriet Martineau”, a remarkable yet difficult achievement. Soon after Comte himself would recommend these volumes to his students instead of his own. To date, many writers regard Martineau herself as the first female sociologist. Citing her introduction of Comte to the English-speaking world and the elements of sociological perspective that may be found in her original writing, sociologists worldwide often argue for her recognition as a kindred spirit if not a significant contributor to the sociological field.
Contributions
In 1853, Martineau published a condensed English language version of the Philosophie Positive. Between 1852 and 1866, she contributed regularly to England’s Daily News and would submit her Letters from Ireland, a short series written during a visit to that country in the summer of 1852. For many years, Martineau worked as a contributor to the Westminster Review, and was one of few supporters whose pecuniary assistance in 1854 prevented the establishment’s extinction or forced sale. In early 1855, Martineau found herself suffering from heart disease and soon thereafter began to construct her autobiography. Her life, which she feared to be so near its close, would be prolonged for nearly twenty years after.
Aside from her literary success, Martineau cultivated and maintained a tiny farm at Ambleside, and helped to sustain many of her poorer neighbors. Her busy life bore the consistent impress of two leading characteristics; industry and sincerity.
When Darwin's The Origin of Species was published in 1859, Erasmus Darwin sent a copy to Martineau. At the age of 58, she was continuing to review literature from her home in the Lake District and sent her thanks to Erasmus, adding that she had previously praised "the quality & conduct of [Charles’] mind” but that it was “an unspeakable satisfaction to see here the full manifestation of its earnestness & simplicity, its sagacity, its industry, & the patient power by which it has collected such a mass of facts". To her fellow Malthusian George Holyoake, she wrote, "What a book it is! …The range and mass of knowledge take away one's breath."
On June 27, 1867, Martineau would die at her home, "The Knoll". Her obituary, published by the “Daily News” was one endorsed by posterity, having been selected from her own autobiographical sketches. Of herself, Martineau would write, "Her original power was nothing more than was due to earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range. With small imaginative and suggestive powers, and therefore nothing approaching to genius, she could see clearly what she did see, and give a dear expression to what she had to say. In short, she could popularize while she could neither discover nor invent."
ReferencesISBN links support NWE through referral fees
- This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.
- Maria Weston Chapman, Autobiography, with Memorials (1877)
- Mrs. Fenwick Miller, Harriet Martineau (1884, "Eminent Women Series").
- Paul L. Riedesel, "Who Was Harriet Martineau?". Journal of the History of Sociology, vol. 3, 1981. Pp.63-80.
- Papers relating to Harriet Martineau are held in the University of Birmingham's Special Collections.
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