‘Called hither by the commotion of the times’: Martineau and the Press, 1837–1850

This chapter connects Martineau’s contribution to shaping the Victorian press during its extraordinary rapid evolution during the 1840s to her work for Dickens at Household Words and shows that her agenda for the press developed earlier and was far more nuanced than has been previously recognized. Establishing herself in the elite intellectual quarterlies, simultaneously working with Charles Knight on the Penny Magazine and other projects aimed at mass-market working-class readers, and contributing to Thornton Leigh Hunt and G.G. Lewes’s progressive weekly The Leader in 1850-51, Martineau developed a remarkably flexible and constantly evolving journalistic presence that, in the 1850s and early 1860s, would allow her to become a consistent presence in both mass-market and elite press venues, to appear, simultaneously, in daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly outlets.