Harriet Martineau - A Free Thinker

Harriet Martineau journalist and writer, was best known as a populariser of political economy, though her career spanned many other aspects of Victorian literary culture.  The daughter of a Unitarian Norwich cloth manufacturer, she shot to fame in 1832 as author of Illustrations of Political Economy – twenty-five short stories showing how economic conditions impacted on the lives of ordinary people in a variety of social environments.

She visited America in 1834 for two years and identified with the anti-slavery cause, which she promoted in her journalism for the rest of her working life.  She also wrote fiction, travel books on America and the Middle East, and political analyses of conditions in India and Ireland, and is regarded by many as the first significant British woman sociologist.

https://martineausociety.co.uk/the-martineaus/harriet-martineau