Harriet Martineau

Although raised by a mother who believed women should be devoted to the domestic, Harriet Martineau turned to journalism, economics and sociology to support her family when her father's textile business failed in 1829. Her first book, Illustrations of Political Economy was a bestseller, and catpulted her into the London circle of intellectuals, writers and reformers in which Elizabeth Jesser Reid also moved. 

As well as political economy, she wrote extensively on the United States and slavery (fuelled by travelling there between 1834 and 1836), and also penned several novels. Severe illness with a uterine tumour confined her to her home in the early 1840s, but she continued to write about her experience of illness. While Mary Clarke Mohl, in her letterts to Elizabeth Jesser Reid, suggested that Martineau seek out surgery in France, Martineau turned to mesmerism for help with her illness, which began to improve after a course of this treatment in 1844.

She continued to travel in the East, and to write, including Household Education, which bemoaned the education offered to women. She settled in the Lake District, close to Reid's other friend, Henry Crabb Robinson, where she remained for most of her later life.

While the collection does not hold any letters from Martineau, she is frequently mentioned in letters from Mohl and Bostock, illustrating her place in the wider mileau of radicalism and reform in which Reid moved.