These books are in the form of PDFs. They are printable and searchable. They have been digitised by scanning nineteenth century or early twentieth century copies of the books. These original scans are also available in the Internet Archive. To make them more readable we have omitted the images, which can be seen, if desired, with the original scans in the Internet Archive. Books dated later than 1922 may not be viewed from within the USA.

Many books of the period up to 1922 were originally published in serial form, usually in weekly instalments. Such books might be put into book form for the first time several years after the author's death.

Harriet Martineau, 1802-1876

English writer, sister of James Martineau, born in Norwich, the daughter of a textile manufacturer of Huguenot descent. In 1821 she wrote her first article for the (unitarian) Monthly Repository; and then produced Devotional Exercises for the Use of Young Persons (1826), and short stories about machinery and wages. Her next book was Addresses for the Use of Families (1826). In 1829 the failure of the house in which she, her mother, and her sisters had placed their money, obliged her to earn her living. In 1832 she became a successful author through writing tales based on economic or legal ideas, in Illustrations of Political Economy, followed by Poor Laws and Paupers Illustrated (1833-34), and settled in London. After a visit to the U.S.A. (1834-36) she published Society in America, and a novel Deerbrook in 1839, and a second novel The Hour and the Man about Toussaint l’Ouverture. From 1839 to 1844 she was an invalid at Tynemouth, but recovered through mesmerism, (her subsequent belief in which alienated many friends), and made her home at Ambleside in 1845, the year of Forest and Game-law Tales. After visiting Egypt and Palestine she issued Eastern Life (1848). In 1851, in conjunction with H G Atkinson she published Letters on the Laws of Man’s Social Nature which was so agnostic that it gave much offence; and in 1853 she translated and condensed Comte’s Philosophie Positive. She also wrote much for the daily and weekly press and the larger reviews.

Taken with acknowledgement from the 1990 Chamber’s Biographical Dictionary.