‘I have an all important review to write'

‘It is just a year now since you made me a “gentleman of the press,” – or Maid-of-all-work to D. News,’ Harriet Martineau reminded her editor, Frederick Knight Hunt, in 1853. The ironic second thought, or redefinition of her role, seems telling in view of her lifelong concern for the fair treatment of servants, but she was also prompted by her consciousness of ‘being so entirely alone, – so far off, – that I can never be sure of being right, & doing what is best.’ ¹ She was referring to her now permanent residence in the Lake District, away from the hurly-burly of London. Although she did go to London, Birmingham, and other places both for business and pleasure, in the early 1850s, Martineau was clearly conscious of her unusual position as a newspaper leader-writer living in relative obscurity. She also, like many other nineteenth-century women journalists, exploited the practice of author anonymity for much of her career, varying this with the use of pseudonyms (‘Discipulus’ at the start, ‘From the Mountain’ towards the end), and as anonymity declined in the 1860s, with the occasional use of her own name or initials. ² As Alexis Easley has indicated, Martineau’s presence in a wide range of periodicals and newspapers allowed her to adapt and disguise her voice to suit her multifarious purposes, ‘alternately revealing and concealing her gendered identity as a means of gaining cultural power.’ ³ For Linda Peterson she also functions as a ‘wisdom writer’, adapting the traditional prophetic and elevated style of the Carlylean or Arnoldian ‘sage’ to suit her more down-to-earth engagement with the practical realities of modern life. ⁴ For both Peterson and George P. Landow, the distinction between the Victorian ‘sage’ and the ‘wisdom’ writer derives not only from the differences in their rhetorical style but also their position vis-à-vis society. Whereas the sage is a prophet who speaks from the margins, the ‘wisdom’ writer voices the society’s ‘essential beliefs and assumptions’. ⁵ Martineau’s position – both inside society, as the voice of shared experience and common sense, and on the margins, so often vilified as an ‘unfeminine’ eccentric – complicates our attempts to categorise her as definitely one thing or the other: a problem further exacerbated by the characteristics of her prose style and stance as a journalist.