(re)inventing authorship: harriet martineau in the literary marketplace of the 1820s

Abstract

In this re-examination of Martineau's early career, it is argued thatMartineau redefines authorship away from Romantic conceptions of originality, genius and inspiration and toward a new Victorian understanding of authorship asengagement with what Robert Darnton calls “the communications circuit” – whatshe would have called more simply “the market.” Martineau emphasizes the roleof editors in developing her work, booksellers in successfully marketing it, and ongoing relationships with periodical as well as book publishers in sustaining her career. Her reconception of authorship shows the effects of her entry into the profession of letters in the 1820s, the heyday of the literary periodical, but itincorporates as well lessons she extracted from the lives of earlier writers, whose works she reviewed during her literary apprenticeship with the Monthly Repository.