Harriet Martineau: life of the week

Thinker, feminist, sociologist, campaigner. 19th-century writer Harriet Martineau was a pioneer and a radical across a huge range of areas, but it's very likely that you've never heard of her. In this episode of the History Extra podcast, Stuart Hobday tells Matt Elton about a figure who played a key role in shaping the modern worlds. and wasn't afraid to ruffle some feathers along the way. Stuart, thank you so much for being with us on the History Extra podcast today.

We are here to talk about someone who, and this is a bit of a confession right at the top from me, despite me having studied sociology for a fair number of years, I had not heard about until fairly recently. Can you just, in a very brief nutshell, Talk about who we're going to be covering today. We're talking about Harriet Martineau. I've written a couple of books about Harriet Martineau in the last few years and there is a growth of interest in her.

She was a radical writer in the 19th century and she was almost too radical, so much so that she was sort of forgotten really and the establishment wrote her out of the 19th century narrative. She became known as a sort of notorious atheist. And of course, that didn't go down too well in the 1850s. And from that point onwards, she wasn't super well remembered. But there's a growth of interest in her.

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