WOMEN, EMANCIPATION AND LITERATURE
The Papers of Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876, from Birmingham University Library

This microfilm collection brings together the rich correspondence and papers of Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876, from Birmingham University Library.

“She was one of the most famous women of her lifetime, becoming a celebrity in 1832, when she published a monthly series of didactic stories intended to popularize the new notions of political economy, the Illustrations of Political Economy, which by 1834 were selling 10,000 copies monthly.”

Dr Gayle Graham Yates

Associate Professor of Women’s Studies,

University of Minnesota

commenting in Makers of Nineteenth Century Culture (Routledge & Kegan Paul. 1982)

Author, journalist, social commentator and leading feminist intellectual in the second half of the nineteenth century, Harriet Martineau is most noted for her economic, social and political contributions to the theories of her day, particularly on

• Political Economy
• Positivist Philosophy
• Agnosticism
• Radical Causes
• Emancipation and the Abolition of Slavery
• Equal Rights for Women
• Better Working Conditions for domestic, agricultural and factory labourers

She is also well known for her feminist writings in the Daily News, the Cornhill Magazine, the Edinburgh Review, the London and Westminster Review and the Chambers Journal, and for her exemplary work as a journalist.

She travelled in America during 1834-1836 meeting political leaders, literary figures, historians and abolitionists such as:

• Supreme Court Chief Justice John Marshall
• Senator Daniel Webster
• Senator Henry Clay
• President Andrew Jackson
• President James Madison
• Margaret Fuller
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• George Bancroft
• William Lloyd Garrison

She was outspoken in public meetings against Slavery.

On her return to England she wrote Society in America (1837).  This was a most detailed and careful analysis of American social principles and practices judged against the American constitutional principles of democratic equality.  Society in America is a classic study, a forerunner of the discipline of sociology, and a close parallel to, and equally as rich as Alexis de Tocqueville’s great work Democracy in America (1835).

Other important writings include:

• How to Observe Manners and Morals (1838)
• Retrospect of Western Travel (1838)
• Her manuscript Autobiography which was published posthumously (1877)
• The History of England during the Thirty Years Peace 1816-1846 (1849-50)

As a leading feminist, Martineau campaigned vigorously for women’s right to work; women’s right to education; sensible dress and health measures for women; fair working practices; the establishment of the first colleges for women, Queen’s College in Harley Street in London (1848) and the Ladies’ College in Bedford Square (1849); in support of Florence Nightingale’s school for nursing at St. Thomas's Hospital in London in the late 1850s; throughout America at women’s rights conventions and in London she wrote lead articles for the Daily News in the 1850s – which were especially influential prior to the passing of the Divorce and Matrimonial Causes Acts.

She supported and signed the first petition for the vote for women that went to Parliament sponsored by John Stuart Mill in 1866.

In addition, as a journalist and reporter of national and international affairs she made a most significant contribution and achieved popular acclaim.

She was a voluminous writer.  She published over 1,400 leaders in the Daily News between 1852 and 1866 and, an even greater number of articles in the main journals of the period.  Examples of this work have been batched together as:

• Biographical Sketches, 1852-1875 (1877)
• The Factory Controversy: a Warning Against Meddling Legislation (1855)
• Household Education (1848)
• Health, Husbandry and Handicraft (1861)

All these activities are richly documented in the wealth of correspondence in the Birmingham University Library Collection.

It is especially rich in letters from or about Harriet’s contemporaries.  These include Matthew Arnold, Florence Nightingale, Elizabeth Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Samuel Courtauld, W E Gladstone, Robert Graves, Samuel Lucas, Lord John Russell, Maria Weston Chapman and Henry William Wilberforce.

The Collection also features:-

• Autograph manuscripts including her ‘Autobiography’.
• Letters to and from a host of important publishers: John Chapman of the Westminster Review; Henry Reeve, editor of the Edinburgh Review; Sir John Robinson, Thomas Walker and William Weir of the Daily News; Charles Knight; John Murray; William S Orr and Henry Whitworth of Liverpool, Secretary of the National Association of Factory Occupiers.
• Letters to and from other members of her family, Helen, Richard, Russell, Susan and Thomas Martineau.
• Manuscript notes on Strikes, Press Cuttings and Testimonial Papers.
• Manuscript notes for ‘History of Forty Years Peace’

“The contribution of Harriet Martineau to the women’s movement has often been overlooked.  She was too fiercely independent to be at home as a member of any organisation.  She had little sympathy with the Owenite socialists, no sympathy in fact for any women’s movement until the 1850s when she was too ill to move from her Ambleside home.  A fascinating and still enigmatic woman, her ideas deserve more sympathetic appreciation and more study than they have been given in the past.”

Olive Banks

Professor of Sociology, Emerita, University of Leicester, commenting in

The Bibliographical Dictionary of British Feminists, vol. 1 1800-1930

(Wheatsheaf 1985)

A remarkable woman, a pioneer of British middle class radicalism; as a writer, literary figure and dedicated journalist Harriet Martineau is a crucial nineteenth century commentator.  This collection should prove essential for Women’s Studies libraries and all those interested in the Women’s Movement, British radicalism, journalism, literature, and the Abolition of Slavery.