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"Michael Hill’s scholarship has done much to recuperate Martineau’s literary reputation and to promote her contributions to modern culture and society as well as to the discipline of sociology. . . . In this judiciously chosen collection, Michael Hill reveals a very different side of Martineau than even scholars of the woman and her work are familiar with. . . . thoroughly delightful and a genuine pleasure to read. It is likely to appeal to readers of travel literature and memoirs, and of those interested in the life and work of women writers, in British social and cultural studies, and in literary and disciplinary studies."
- Deborah A. Logan, Associate Professor of English, Western Kentucky University
This inviting and wonderfully accessible collection of Harriet Martineau’s essays (together with one fictional tale) — culled from hard-to-find American and British publications — chronicles the life, economy, society, and physical terrain of the English Lake District during the mid-Victorian era. As the first woman sociologist and an astute social observer, Martineau portrays and comments on the people of her beloved Lake District, their customs, virtues, health, and social problems. Her many books, articles, and newspaper essays sold widely during her lifetime (1802-1876) and remain today highly readable, pointed, and instructive.
Dr. Michael R. Hill, an award-winning Martineau interpreter, provides a lucid introduction and an illustrative selection from Martineau’s autobiography and her major serialized writings on Ambleside and the Lake District. The collection includes “A Year in Ambleside,” a charming book of months written for American readers; “The English Lake District,” which vividly describes the hills, lakes, inns, and paths of this scenic area for energetic English tourists; and “Our Farm of Two Acres,” in which Martineau demonstrates that running a profitable small farm can be a respectable opportunity of employment for single women. Finally, in the didactic fictional parable, “Highest House in Wathendale,” she offers a perceptive and sobering analysis of alcoholism, its mistreatment, and consequences.
This excellent sampling of the work of a pioneering sociologist and gifted writer, sometimes compared to Thoreau, will be of great interest to sociologists, scholars and students of women’s studies, and tourists of England’s Lake District.
Michael R. Hill, Ph.D. (Lincoln, NE), received the 2002 Harriet Martineau Sociological Society Award, is the coeditor (with Susan Hoecker-Drysdale) of the award-winning Harriet Martineau: Theoretical and Methodological Perspectives, the author of Archival Strategies and Techniques, and formerly the chair of the American Sociological Association Section on the History of Sociology.