Routledge Dictionary of Economics, Second Edition
Martineau, Harriet, 1802–76 (B3)
Leading popularizer of economics in England in the mid-nineteenth century. Born in Norwich, the daughter of a Unitarian cloth manufacturer, she studied SMITH, RICARDO and MALTHUS from the age of 14 and was inspired to write on political economy by MARCET’S popular works. Severe deafness forced her to adopt a literary career, which she successfully did with her twenty-four part Illustrations of Political Economy, Fables with Morals, beginning with an account of life in the wilds of South Africa.
This work followed the typical classical division of the subject into production, distribution, exchange and consumption, and gained her a reputation as a female Malthusian. She said that the research materials she used were ‘the standard works on the subject of what I then took to be a science’.
See also: female economists; Malthus
References
Fox, C. (1883) Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 2 vols, London: Virago Press.
Martineau, H. (1859) Illustrations of Political Economy, 9 vols, London: Routledge, Warner & Routledge.
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