MARTINEAU, HARRIET (1802–1876), miscellaneous writer, born at Norwich 12 June 1802, was third daughter and sixth of eight children of Thomas Martineau, manufacturer of camlet and bombazine, by Elizabeth (Rankin), daughter of a sugar-refiner at Newcastle-on-Tyne. The eminent divine, Dr. James Martineau, was her younger brother. The Martineau family traced its descent to a Huguenot, David Martineau, who, after the revocation of the edict of Nantes, had settled as a surgeon at Norwich. A succession of Martineaus followed the same profession at Norwich, the last of whom, Philip Meadows (d. 1828), was a brother of Thomas Martineau. The family was unitarian and belonged to the little literary coterie of which William Taylor was the head. Mrs. Barbauld and her niece, Miss Aikin, were occasional visitors (Miss Martineau, Autobiography,, i. 297–304).
The elder Martineaus, feeling that their fortune was precarious in the war time, pinched themselves to provide all their children with an education which would enable them to earn a living. Harriet was a sickly child, and suffered for many years from indigestion and nervous weakness. The well-meant but rigid discipline of her parents, and the thoughtless roughness of the elder children, injured her temper and made her gloomy, jealous, and morbid. She was, however, persevering, and at an early age began compiling little note-books of an edifying tendency. At seven years old she happened to open ‘Paradise Lost,’ and she soon knew it almost by heart. She was educated at home, learning Latin from her eldest brother, Thomas, and music from John Christmas Beckwith [q. v.] the Norwich organist. In 1813 she was sent with her sister Rachel to a school in the town kept by the Rev. Isaac Perry, where she learnt French. Besides Latin and French she was practised in English composition. When Perry left Norwich in 1815 she left school, but continued her classical studies at home. While at Perry's her deafness began to show itself, and before she was sixteen it had become very distressing. It was afterwards (in 1820) suddenly increased ‘by what might be called an accident’ (ib. i. 124). She never possessed the senses of taste or smell, except that once in her life she tasted a leg of mutton and ‘thought it delicious’ (Payn, p. 118). The morbid state of her nerves and temper induced her parents to send her for a change of scene and climate to Bristol, where the wife of her mother's brother kept a school. Here for the first time she found in her aunt a ‘human being of whom she was not afraid’ (Autobiog. i. 90). After fifteen months' stay, she returned home in April 1819, morally improved by affectionate treatment, but with health rather worse. She had been overworked and medically mismanaged. She had become an almost fanatical disciple of Lant Carpenter [q. v.], the unitarian minister at Bristol. She now read the Bible systematically, was attracted to philosophical books by Carpenter's influence, and was especially impressed by Hartley, whose ‘Treatise on Man’ became to her ‘perhaps the most important book in the world, except the Bible’ (ib. p. 104). She also read Priestley, and became, like Hartley and Priestley, a believer in the doctrine of ‘philosophical necessity,’ which greatly modified her religious beliefs. In 1821, at the suggestion of her brother James, at this period her ‘idolised companion,’ she sent an article (on ‘Female Writers on Practical Divinity’) to the unitarian organ, the ‘Monthly Repository.’ It was warmly praised by her brother Thomas, who upon her confessing to the authorship advised her to give up darning stockings and take to literature. She at once began to write upon ‘Devotional Exercises,’ and made an attempt at a theological novel.
In 1823 her brother Thomas was taken ill and died in June 1824 at Madeira. Her father's health broke down, partly from the shock of losing his son. He became embarrassed during the financial crisis of 1825–6 and died in June 1826, leaving a very small provision for his family. Harriet soon afterwards was ‘virtually engaged’ to a poor fellow-student of her brother James, named Worthington. His family objected, misled by false reports of her being engaged to another; and after many difficulties had been surmounted he became insane and died some months later. She seems to have come to the conclusion in later life that her escape from the risks of marriage was on the whole fortunate. During 1827, however, her health suffered. She wrote some melancholy poems, and sent some ‘dull and doleful prose writings’ (ib. i. 134) to an old Calvinistic publisher named Houlston of Wellington, Shropshire. He accepted ‘two little eightpenny stories,’ sent her 5l., her first literary earnings, and asked for more copy. She sent him several short tales, one of which, called ‘The Rioters,’ dealt with the wages question; it was republished without her consent by Houlston's successors, after some machine-breaking, about 1842.
A long illness followed, which was successfully treated at Newcastle by her brother-in-law, husband of her eldest sister, Elizabeth. While there she began a literary connection with William Johnson Fox [q. v.],
