Harriet Martineau exhibited remarkable intellectual precocity, discovering John Milton's Paradise Lost (1667) at age seven. Beginning with her study of Malthusian political economy at age fourteen and culminating in her editorializing against the...

In the obituary she wrote for herself, Harriet Martineau claimed that her powers as a writer derived merely from "earnestness and intellectual clearness within a certain range," that she had "small imaginative and suggestive powers," and that she could...

A woman of keen intellect and prodigious energy, Harriet Martineau transformed the nature of travel writing, making it into an investigative tool of the social sciences, a branch of study in which the provinces of sociology, anthropology, and political...

In her autobiography Harriet Martineau states emphatically that authorship was never "a matter of choice" for her. She wrote not "for amusement, or for money, or for fame, or for any reason but because I could not help it." Regardless of her...

Harriet Martineau's "somewhat remarkable" life, her controversial books and essays, and her strongly held convictions on such diverse matters as slavery, woman's rights, farming, medicine, and religion were frequent subjects of comment among the major...

A writer of eclectic interests and limitless enthusiasms, Harriet Martineau was a novelist, political economist, journalist, travel writer, essayist, historian, translator, editor, and autobiographer. Her prodigious output resulted in works of uneven...

Harriet Martineau (1802-1874), the "founding mother of sociology", was the daughter of an English textile manufacturer who lost his business during a depression in 1825 and died in 1826. Martineau supported herself, her mother, a crippled sister, and...

Harriet Martineau (1802-1876), an English writer and an adherent of positivist philosophy, was one of the most widely admired writers of her day. Harriet Martineau was born in Norwich on June 12, 1802. Her life is the story of adversity overcome. Armed...