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'I have an all important review to write': Harriet Martineau's journalism

Sanders, Valerie

Authors



Contributors

Gaby Weiner
Editor

Abstract

Like many of her contemporaries who wrote non-fictional prose, Martineau is a distinctive stylist. Compared with the key ‘sage’ writers of her day – Ruskin and Carlyle – she may sound understated. As a journalist who felt strongly about the issues she discussed she needed to express herself clearly, and would always eschew the elaborate metaphors or biblical prognostications of her loftier rivals. Nevertheless her prose is rarely purely functional, and over her career of half a century she develops a recognisable ‘voice’, foregrounding the practical and commonplace over the extraordinary, and the homely over the exotic, while never quite losing sight of the romantic possibilities of the everyday. Either way her prolific periodical writing makes her integral to any history of nineteenth-century journalism, and key to our understanding both of its openness to newcomers and its initial distrust of those outside ‘the club’.

Citation

Sanders, V. (2016). 'I have an all important review to write': Harriet Martineau's journalism. In V. Sanders, & G. Weiner (Eds.), Harriet Martineau and the Birth of Disciplines : Nineteenth-century intellectual powerhouse (187-200). London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315586229

Online Publication Date Jul 15, 2016
Publication Date Aug 4, 2016
Deposit Date May 3, 2022
Publisher Routledge
Pages 187-200
Series Title The Nineteenth Century Series
Book Title Harriet Martineau and the Birth of Disciplines : Nineteenth-century intellectual powerhouse
Chapter Number 11
ISBN 9780367175801; 9781472446930
DOI https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315586229
Public URL https://hull-repository.worktribe.com/output/3621511