ABSTRACT
In 1855, Martineau wrote her autobiography under the mistaken assumption that she was dying. It was consigned to the care of her American friend and fellow-abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, and following Martineau’s death in 1876 was published to considerable critical outcry. Contemporary commentators on the Autobiography hastened to criticise Martineau’s unwomanly lack of reticence, but failed to note that her rhetorical strategies were multifaceted and included extraordinary, lengthy passages where the sights, sounds, textures and impressions of childhood were given emotive power with all the resources of fiction.
