As a social scientist, Harriet Martineau (1802–1876) published at least fifteen book titles, some of them spanning several volumes.

As a journalist, Martineau made a living by writing for mid-19th century journals and newspapers, encouraging intellectual and social debates across her native England and around the world.

As a writer, she engaged readers of novels, travelogues, biographies, and much more – she probably would have a book in every section of the library if her work were still in print today.

How did Martineau come to be known as the mother of social science, and even more curiously, how did she manage to support herself with the writing of her philosophic and social opinions and observations in a time when the role of women was assigned to the household sphere?

It was an age when, according to Regan Penaluna in How to Think Like a Woman, women were allowed, even encouraged, to work as writers as long as they confined themselves to novels, reviews, translations, and home and hearth. They were encouraged to leave the heavy ideas to male journalists.

How did such a prolific, insightful, and relevant writer become nearly obscure, her work lost in the shadow of the acknowledged great thinkers such as Rousseau, Kant, and her contemporary social scientists?

Harriet Martineau was born in 1802, the sixth of eight children born to textile manufacturer Thomas Martineau and his wife, Elizabeth Rankin Martineau. Harriet’s father’s work provided a middle-class upbringing for the family, but she suffered from things a comfortable lifestyle could not cure.

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