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“... view of political economy has advanced scarcely at all since the days of Hard Times and Harriet Martineau. His dictum that ‘the full dominion of either market or plan today requires a narrow and socially-insulated dictatorship’ should, but probably won’t, cause the right-wing ultras of the ‘No Turning Back’ group to think just a ...”

“... was little range of choice for the educated woman. They could teach, but the pronouncement of Harriet Martineau earlier in the century that only one in a thousand was fit to teach still applied and was more widely recognised as a truth, so that, though the air of the Nineties was not as loud as formerly with the cries of governesses being trodden ...”

“... young girlhood they were intellectually precocious. Some of the feats of precocity are startling. Harriet Martineau started in on Milton at the age of seven. It is recorded that Mrs Newton Crosland (1812-95) was reading fluently at the age of three. Both Mary Elizabeth (1806-1907) and Sara Coleridge (1802-52) are on record as being precocious: but Sara ...”

“... and remained a lifelong confidant. He introduced Charles and Emma to the political economist Harriet Martineau (whom Charles and his sisters once feared might carry Erasmus off in marriage), Thomas and Jane Carlyle, George Eliot and G.H. Lewes. Cash and connections flowed through family channels, and it was the family, too, that could be relied on ...”

“... called ‘Silly Novels by Lady Novelists’. She exempted three women from her criticism – ‘Harriet Martineau, Currer Bell and Mrs Gaskell’ – whose excellence results in their having ‘been treated as cavalierly as if they were men’. Today the exceptional trio would read ‘George Eliot, Charlotte Brontë and Elizabeth Gaskell’. The notion ...”

“... that her correspondence was to be sealed for thirty years. This backfired in several directions. Harriet Martineau, who was first off the mark with an affectionate biography, had little to buttress her account of the infamous marriage. Then, eight years later, Teresa Guiccioli, now settled in Paris as the widowed Marquise de Boissy, stepped out of the ...”

“... allow masculinity equal time: Tom Brown as well as Queen Victoria, Charles Kingsley as well as Harriet Martineau. And for all their apparent political correctness, the editors are rarely squeamish about incorporating texts whose politics are likely to trouble students. While the Norton’s new section on ‘Slavery and Freedom’ shies away from ...”

“... called ‘the huge demon of Mechanism’. It was also a question of who gained and who lost. To Harriet Martineau, vulgarising the lessons of political economy in 1832, the introduction of machinery was a simple issue: ‘It was a saving of labour; and as all saving of labour is a good thing, our machinery was a good thing.’ Perhaps she should have ...”

“... the city to the west. The tomb of Christ may or may not be in the right place; in the 19th century Harriet Martineau referred to the ‘pretended sepulchre’ and Thackeray thought the Church of the Holy Sepulchre ‘the least sacred place in Jerusalem’. The Western or Wailing Wall, so sacred to Jews, also seems to have moved. Originally it was the ...”

“... and reading novels – wh. seems the employment of English ladies . . . as my favourite Miss Martineau says it is far nobler to earn than to save. I think I should like to earn very much & become celebrated like the aforesaid Harriet who is one of the only sensible women living beside thee & me & 2 or 3 more I ...”

“... quickly: getting as far as Jane’s departure from Thornfield (around 70,000 words), according to Harriet Martineau, in less than two months. The start of this work has a myth of its own. Charlotte was in Manchester, unable to leave Patrick who was recovering from his cataract operation and had to lie in a darkened room for weeks. She had just received ...”