Harriet Martineau — A Reader’s Guide

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Authors: Miller, Florence Fenwick, 1854-1936 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2011 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Women and literature -- England -- History -- 19th century; Martineau, Harriet, 1802-1876; Women social reformers -- Great Britain -- Biography Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 74,964

Reading time 326 min

Text sections 9

Harriet Martineau — A Reader’s Guide can be approached with a clearer sense of reading commitment from its source measurements: 74,964 words, 5 hr 26 min estimated reading time, and 9 detected text sections.

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Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #36965

Florence Fenwick Miller's 1884 biography of Harriet Martineau, drawing on new sources and covering the final 21 years of Martineau's life, with a preface that critiques prior biographical work and excerpts that reveal Martineau's views on euthanasia and her own longing for death.

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THE CHILD AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL 1

EARLY WOMANHOOD; DEVELOPING INFLUENCES 29

GRIEF STRUGGLE, AND PROGRESS 67

THE GREAT SUCCESS 100

FIVE ACTIVE YEARS 130

FIVE YEARS OF ILLNESS, AND THE MESMERIC RECOVERY 155

IN THE MATURITY OF HER POWERS 200

IN RETREAT; JOURNALISM 231

THE CHILD AT HOME AND AT SCHOOL.

When Louis XIV. of France revoked the Edict of Nantes, in 1688, a large number of the Protestants who were driven out of France by the impending persecutions came to seek refuge in this favored land of liberty of ours. Many who thus settled in our midst were amongst the most skillful and industrious workers, of various grades, that could have been found in the dominions of the persecuting king who drove them forth. They must have been, too, in the nature of the case, strong-hearted, clear in the comprehension of their principles, and truthful and conscientious about matters of opinion; for the cowardly, the weak, and the false could stay in their own land. From the good stock of these exiles for conscience-sake sprang Harriet Martineau.

Her paternal Huguenot ancestor was a surgeon, who was married to a fellow-countrywoman and co-religionist of the name of Pierre. This couple of exiles for freedom of opinion settled in Norwich, where the husband pursued his profession. Their descendants supplied a constant succession of highly-respected surgeons to the same town, without intermission, until the early part of this century, when the line of medical practitioners was closed by the death of Harriet Martineau's elder brother at less than thirty years old. The Martineau family thus long occupied a good professional position in the town of Norwich.

Harriet's father, however, was not a surgeon, but a manufacturer of stuffs, the very names of which are now strange in our ears--bombazines and camlets. His wife was Elizabeth Rankin, the daughter of a sugar-refiner of Newcastle-on-Tyne. A true Northumbrian woman was Mrs. Martineau; with a strong sense of duty, but little warmth of temperament; with the faults of an imperious disposition, and its correlative virtues of self-reliance and strength of will. These qualities become abundantly apparent in her in the story of her relationship with her famous daughter. On both sides, therefore, Harriet Martineau was endowed by hereditary descent with the strong qualities--the power, the clear-headedness, and the keen conscience--which she interfused into all the work of her life.

Thomas and Elizabeth Martineau, her father and mother, were the parents of eight children, two of whom became widely known and influential as thinkers and writers. Harriet was the sixth of the family, and was born at Norwich, in Magdalen street, on the 12th of June, 1802, the mother being at that time thirty years old. The next child, born in 1805, was the boy who grew up to become known as Dr. James Martineau; so that the two who were to make the family name famous were next to each other in age. Another child followed in this family group, but not until 1811, when Harriet was nine years old, so that she could experience with reference to this baby some of that tender, protective affection which is such an education for elder children, and so delightful to girls with strong maternal instincts such as she possessed.

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Florence Fenwick Miller opens her biography of Harriet Martineau with a pointed critique of earlier biographical efforts. In the preface, she dismisses Mrs. Chapman's completion of Martineau's Autobiography as 'little more than a repetition' in a 'peculiar style,' and quotes a critic who called it 'one more illustration of the folly of intrusting the composition of biography to persons who have only the wholly irrelevant claim of intimate friendship.' Miller then asserts that her own record of the final twenty-one years of Martineau's life is 'entirely fresh, though necessarily brief.' This combative stance sets the tone for a work that aims to correct the record and fill a gap in Martineau's story.

A Biographer's Agenda

Miller's preface reveals a clear agenda: to provide a more systematic and literary account of Martineau's later years than Mrs. Chapman had managed. She notes that Martineau herself, had she known how much life remained, would have chosen 'some one more skilled in literature, and more closely acquainted with English literary and political affairs.' Miller thus positions herself as that more qualified biographer. The preface also credits Martineau's relatives—Dr. James Martineau and Mrs. Henry Turner—for 'some information and hints,' suggesting a reliance on family sources to supplement the Autobiography. This framing invites readers to view the biography as a corrective, not merely a supplement.

Martineau's Voice on Suffering and Death

An excerpt from a letter to Henry G. Atkinson, dated November 19, 1872, gives direct access to Martineau's own voice. She writes: 'I who never loved life, and who would any day of my life have rather departed than stayed.' This stark admission is paired with a discussion of a missing chapter on 'Euthanasia' that she had written for Life in the Sick-Room but omitted for fear it might 'injure the impression of the rest of the volume.' Miller speculates that the chapter would have treated the subject with 'courage, calmness, common sense, and logic.' The excerpt also includes a passage from Dawn Island where Martineau argues that 'every human creature that has a spirit in him must therefore be taken care of, and kept alive as long as possible.' This tension between personal longing for death and a public ethic of care is a recurring note.

The Missing Chapter and Its Implications

Miller's investigation into the missing 'Euthanasia' chapter yields no results: 'I have made such inquiries as I could (of one of Miss Martineau's executors and others), but can get no tidings.' This absence becomes a narrative device, highlighting what cannot be recovered. Miller quotes a passage from Life in the Sick-Room that touches on the question, noting that Martineau observed how 'the great reason why hopeless invalids so commonly endure on when they are longing for the rest of insensibility, is the uncertainty as to whether they may not find themselves still conscious in another state.' The biographer then counters that Martineau's own later life—productive despite illness—supplied 'a stronger reason still against the irrevocable action.' This interplay between Martineau's written words and her lived experience shapes the biography's argument.

Productivity Amid Confinement

Miller emphasizes that even when 'chained to two small rooms,' Martineau's mind 'swept freely through the universe.' She kept up 'an extensive correspondence' and made 'personal efforts for public objects,' such as writing Dawn Island for the Anti-Corn Law League bazaar of 1845. The biography notes that she began her autobiography during this period but 'soon stopped writing' due to illness. Yet Miller insists that Martineau 'never became too ill to feel and to show a vivid interest in every cause that had the happiness and progress of mankind for its object.' This portrait of intellectual and political engagement despite physical limitation is central to Miller's depiction of Martineau's later years.

Miller's biography is best approached as a document of its own time—a late-Victorian attempt to reclaim a subject from what the author saw as inadequate handling. Readers should attend to the way Miller weaves Martineau's own letters and published works into a narrative that stresses her resilience and intellectual range. The missing chapter on euthanasia, though never found, functions as a symbol of the limits of biographical recovery. For those interested in Martineau's later life, this work offers a focused, if partisan, account.

Fenwick Miller’s portrait of Martineau, weary and longing for a gentle end, lingered with me. It made me think of another aging figure, one whose final years were spent pleading for kinder treatment of the oppressed, though he never sought rest himself. Bartholomew de Las Casas; his life, apostolate, and writings — Edition Insights holds a similar quiet ache, a life devoted to others, without that same permission to stop.