SOURCE: Sanders, Valerie. “‘The Cotton-spinners' Romance of Real Life’: Harriet Martineau and the Poor Man's Tale.” In Reason Over Passion: Harriet Martineau and the Victorian Novel, pp. 30-57. Sussex, Eng.: The Harvester Press, 1986.

In the following excerpt, Williams comments on the economic themes in Martineau's work.

Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy grew out of turbulent times:

The year 1831 opened gloomily. Those who believed that revolution was at hand, feared to wish one another a happy new year; and the anxiety about revolution was by no means confined to anti-reformers. Society was already in a discontented and tumultuous state; its most ignorant portion being acted upon at once by hardship at home and example from abroad; and there was every reason to expect a deadly struggle before Parliamentary Reform could be carried.

(History of England during the Thirty Years' Peace 1816-1846, II, p. 24)

The ‘example from abroad’ was...