The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau
General Editor: Deborah Logan
Advisory Editor: Valerie Sanders
The Pickering Masters
978 1 85196 804 6: 234x156mm: £450.00/$795.00
Throughout her fifty-year career, Harriet Martineau’s prolific literary output was matched only by her exchanges with a range of high-profile British, American and European correspondents. The Collected Letters of Harriet Martineau provides a long-awaited, timely and scholarly edition of the extant letters of this prolific Victorian writer.
Scattered throughout the United States and United Kingdom, almost all of the 2,000 letters reproduced in this collection have never before been published. Newly transcribed in five volumes, the set focuses on the letters Martineau wrote herself, contextualizing the correspondence through annotation of the highest standard.
As in her literary work, in her correspondence Martineau comments freely on such topics as the Reform Bill controversy, the Poor Law reform, The American Civil War, American abolitionism and slavery. Besides giving a unique insight into Martineau’s domestic relationships, Martineau’s correspondence with Florence Nightingale on issues such as health reform uniquely blends personal and professional matters. Throughout her life, as this edition shows, Martineau managed to exert her influence on political and social circles, even from her distant Lake District home.
This is essential reading for every scholar of Victorian biography. Yet given the broad content of Martineau’s correspondence, it is also relevant to research in the wider disciplines of nineteenth-century studies, women’s studies, literature, empire studies, slavery and cultural studies.
- The material draws on source material held in the USA, UK and Australia, including the University of Birmingham (UK), University of California at Berkeley, the British Library, National Library of Scotland, the Women’s Library (Guildhall, London), and Harris-Manchester College, Oxford
- Most of this newly transcribed material has never been published before
- Extensive annotation provides biographical, social, political, and historical context, including a biographical directory in Volume 1
- General introduction
- Consolidated index
Sample pages
- Letter to William Wells Brown, 14th March 1851
- Letter sequence to Florence Nightingale and the Hon. Simon Cameron, 25th - 30th September 1862
- Letter to Charles Sumner, November 1861
Contents
Volume 1
This volume comprises letters from Martineau’s early years through to the mid-1830s, including family letters and publishing correspondence relating to the Illustrations of Political Economy. The early correspondence reveals her coming-of-age as an intellectual young woman and self-supporting writer.
Volume 2
This volume takes Martineau’s story forward through the 1830s and 40s. It includes correspondence from her American journeys, her years of invalidism in Tynemouth and her letters on mesmerism. It closes in the 1840s with her move to Ambleside.
Volumes 3 and 4
These volumes cover the 1850s and early 1860s. Despite her severe invalidism, this was Martineau’s most prolific period, both as a writer and correspondent. Her journalistic output increased and her attention turned to current national and international affairs. Central themes of this volume are American abolitionism, Ireland, India, British imperial politics and sanitary reform in the British military. Also included are her philosophical Letters on the Laws of Man’s Nature and Development. Correspondents include the editors of the Daily News (for whom she wrote 1852–66), Henry Reeve of the Edinburgh Review and Florence Nightingale. The Martineau letters to Nightingale included here have never before been published.
Volume 5
This volume covers the late 1860s and 70s, when illness and age increasingly limited Martineau’s productivity. Three appendices contain correspondence written by Maria and Jane Martineau at Harriet’s dictation; shorthand transcriptions by James Martineau, when Harriet requested the destruction of her correspondence, and transcriptions made by James of the lost originals. Extant material relating to correspondence between Martineau and Elizabeth J Reid is also included.
Reviews
Read Maria Frawley's review in full in The Times Literary Supplement
'a magnificent collection of Harriet Martineau's hitherto unpublished letters,... it is better able to show progression, maturity, change of viewpoint and the impact of life experience than more focused collections... This is a rich resource indeed!'
– Gaby Weiner, Martineau Society Newsletter