On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
rny family has maintained an honourable station in society , the eldest sons always practising surgery , the others devoting themselves to commerce or manufactures My father , the youngest of five brothers , was the proprietor , at Norwich his native place , of one of the manufactories peculiar to that town . He had eight children , of whom I am the sixth .
I was born in the month of June , 1802 . The following are the principal circumstances which have combined to give me a taste for literary pursuits : my health now perfectly good , was extremely delicate in my childhood ; I have been , ever since that period , afflicted with an infirmity ( deafness ) which , without absolutely depriving me of
all intercourse with the world , has forced me to seek occupations and pleasures within myself ; lastly , that which has contributed to it more than all the rest , is the affection subsisting between me and that one of my brothers whose age is nearest to my own , and who adbpted one of the learned professions .
The first work that I published was a little volume entitled * Devotional Exercises / for the use of young persons . It appeared in 1 S 22 , and its success encouraged me to let it be followed soon by another of the same description , entitled * Addresses , with Prayers and Hymns , for the use of families and schools . ' About this time a circumstance occurred which was the origin of that series of tales you ^ are now engaged in translating . A . country bookseller asked me to compose for him some little work of fiction ; I thought that I might join the useful
to the agreeable , as I had the choice of the subject , if I could show the folly of the populace of Manchester , who had just been destroying the machinery , to the great detriment of the manufactures , on which their bread depended . J produced a little story , entitled ' The Rioters / and the following year another , on wages , called * The Turn Out . ' I was far from suspecting while I wrote them , that wages and machinery had any thing to do with political economy ; I do not even know whether I had ever heard the name of that science . It was not
till some time afterwards that reading Mrs . Marcet ' s * Conversations on Political Economy , ' I perceived that I had written political economy , as M . Jourdain spoke prose , without knowing it . Mrs . Marcet's excellent work suggested to me the idea that if some principles of the science had been successfully laid down in a narrative form , all might be so equally well . From that moment , I was continually talking with my mother and the brother whom I have mentioned to you , of the plan which I am at present executing . Nevertheless , I had no friend
in the literary world , which is indispensable towards gaining the confidence of the booksellers . No one who could be of any use to me would pay any attention to my plan . Really I cannot complain much of this ; it must , I own , have appeared whimsical enough , and , all things considered , of very doubtful success . I am far from regretting this delay , which has enabled me to exercise myself in different kinds of composition , and has left me time to acquire some knowledge of the world , a thing so necessary to the truth of descriptions so varied as mine must be .
During the three years which preceded the publication of my tales , I was constantly writing on different subjects ; I was besides employed in reviewing works on metaphysics and theology in the
Untitled Article
Miss Harriet Mavtineau . 613
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1833, page 613, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2622/page/29/
-