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Home  »  The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century  »  Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

Alfred H. Miles, ed. The Sacred Poets of the Nineteenth Century. 1907.

By Critical and Biographical Essay by Alfred H. Miles

Harriet Martineau (1802–1876)

HARRIET MARTINEAU, who was born in 1802, was one of the band of writers who gathered round William Johnson Fox, editor of the Monthly Repository, sending contributions to that journal when not more than nineteen years of age. She was much interested in the movements with which Fox was associated, and with her pen contributed much to the furtherance of social and political reform. In 1831 she began the series of “Illustrations of Political Economy,” with which she did so much to popularise the principles laid down by Adam Smith. In 1852 she became a contributor to the Daily News, for which she continued to write for many years. She died on the 27th of June, 1876. Harriet Martineau wrote some verse for children in a small volume of “Addresses with Prayers and Original Hymns for the Use of Families and Schools,” published in 1826, and contributed two hymns to the “Hymns and Anthems” prepared by W. J. Fox in 1845 for the use of his congregation at South Place. The hymn “Arise, my soul” is from the earlier book; the other examples are from the latter.