Critical Miscellanies (Vol. 3 of 3), Essay 6: Harriet Martineau

Morley offers a balanced critical portrait of Harriet Martineau, assessing her autobiographies and a posthumous memorial while distinguishing her moral character from the literary merits of her works. He recounts her austere upbringing, early deafness and private struggles, and traces her development into a professional writer who combined didactic fiction on political economy with social observation, translation, travel, and anti-theological positions. He praises her industry, courage, sincerity, and social insight while noting tendencies toward hardness and insularity, and criticizes an inadequate memorial as lacking literary tact and proportion.