Harriet Martineau and Ireland

Authors

Brian Conway, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Michael R. Hill, University of Nebraska-LincolnFollow

Date of this Version

2009

Citation

Conway, Brian and Michael R. Hill. 2009. “Harriet Martineau and Ireland.” Pp. 47-66 in Social Thought on Ireland in the Nineteenth Century, edited by Séamas Ó Síocháin. Dublin, Ireland: University College Dublin Press.

Comments

Copyright 2009 Michael R. Hill

Abstract

The Victorian sociologist-novelist Harriet Martineau visited Ireland on two different occasions, first in 1832 and again, twenty years later, in 1852, just six years after the Great Famine of 1846, when the country was still very much visibly affected by that event. Her latter journey covered some 1,200 miles and encompassed all four provinces that make up the island of Ireland, north and south. Martineau was not the first foreign visitor to nineteenth century Ireland, of course, but she provided one of the few genuinely sociological interpretations during this time period. This chapter, then, examines Martineau's Irish writings and her contribution to our sociological understanding of nineteenth-century Ireland.