Harriet Martineau

Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Harriet Martineau who, from a non-conformist background in Norwich, became one of the best known writers in the C19th. She had a wide range of interests and used a new, sociological method to observe the world around her, from religion in Egypt to slavery in America and the rights of women everywhere. She popularised writing about economics for those outside the elite and, for her own popularity, was invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria, one of her readers.

→ Listen on BBC Sounds website

Guests

• Valerie Sanders No other episodes
  Professor of English at the University of Hull
• Karen O'Brien 16 episodes
  Professor of English Literature at the University of Oxford
• Ella Dzelzainis No other episodes
  Lecturer in 19th Century Literature at Newcastle University

Reading list

• Intellectual Women and Victorian Patriarchy: Harriet Martineau, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot
  Deirdre David (Palgrave Macmillan, 1987) Google Books →
• Harriet Martineau: Authorship, Society and Empire
  Ella Dzelzainis and Cora Kaplan (eds.) (Manchester University Press, 2010) Google Books →
• Literary Celebrity, Gender and Victorian Authorship, 1850-1914
  Alexis Easley (University of Delaware, 2011) Google Books →
• Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives
  Michael R. Hill and Susan Hoecker-Drysdale (eds) (Routledge, 2003) Google Books →
• Harriet Martineau and the Poetics of Moralism
  Shelagh Hunter (Scolar Press, 1996)
• Harriet Martineau, Victorian Imperialism and the Civilizing Mission
  Deborah A. Logan (Routledge, 2009) Google Books →
• The Hour and the Woman: Harriet Martineau's "Somewhat Remarkable" Life
  Deborah Anna Logan (Northern Illinois University Press, 2002) Google Books →
• Autobiography
  Harriet Martineau (ed. Linda H. Peterson) (Broadview Press, 2006) Google Books →
• Deerbrook: A Novel
  Harriet Martineau (ed. Valerie Sanders) (Penguin Classics, 2004) Google Books →
• Illustrations of Political Economy: Selected Tales
  Harriet Martineau (ed. Deborah Logan) (Broadview Press, 2004) Google Books →
• Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Britain
  Karen O'Brien (Cambridge University Press, 2009) Google Books →
• Reason over Passion: Harriet Martineau and the Victorian Novel
  Valerie Sanders (Palgrave Macmillan, 1986) Google Books →
• Harriet Martineau and the Birth of Disciplines: Nineteenth-century Intellectual Powerhouse
  Valerie Sanders and Gaby Weiner (eds.) (Routledge, 2016) Google Books →
• Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian
  R. K. Webb (Columbia University Press, 1960) Google Books →

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Programme ID: b084d7b0

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/b084d7b0

Auto-category: 305.42 (Women’s history and feminism)

Hello (First sentence from this episode)

Hello, Harriet Martineau was one of the most prolific and famous writers of the 19th century.