Harriet Martineau Authorship, society and empire [Hardcover]

Harriet Martineau' responds to the strong revival of interest in her life and writing, exploring Martineau's controversial views through her innovative use of popular cultural forms-journalism, travel writing, didactic fiction, novels, translation, autobiography and history. This is the first collection of essays to revisit and reassess Martineau's leading place in Victorian culture and in the development of nineteenth-century liberalism. Distinguished contributors-including Isobel Armstrong, Lauren Goodlad, Catherine Hall, Deborah Logan and Linda Peterson-offer critical analyses of her trailblazing career as a professional 'woman of letters'.

The essays collected here move from personal to global concerns in Martineau's oeuvre. The opening essays centre on her bold self-fashioning as a writer, while the second section focuses on the domestic complexities of laissez-faire liberalism in her economic and social vision. Finally, the volume analyses her provocative writings on race, Empire and history - from Atlantic slavery to the Indian Mutiny - demonstrating the international breadth and impact of a remarkable career.

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

I. Authorship and Identity

1. Harriet Martineau, Woman of Letters

2. Harriet Martineau's 'Intellectual Nobility': Gender, Genius, and Disability

3. '(Entre nous, please!)': Harriet Martineau's Correspondence

4. Self-presentation and Instability in Harriet Martineau's Autobiography

5. 'Socinian and Political-Economy Formulas': Martineau the Unitarian

6. Provocative Agendas: Martineau's Translation of Comte

II. Political Economy, Technology and Society

7. Domesticating Political Economy: Language, Gender, and Economics in the Illustrations of Political Economy

8. Feminism, Speculation and Agency in Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of

Political Economy

9. 'Secret Orlc