Harriet Martineau, one of the numerous writers, of both sexes, whom the polygraphic habits of this century make it hard to "class," was born at Norwich in 1802, and belonged to one of the families that made up the remarkable literary society which distinguished that city at the end of the last century and the beginning of this. She began as a religious writer according to the Unitarian persuasion; she ended as a tolerably active opponent of religion. But she found her chief vocation (before, as she did in her middle and later days, becoming a regular journalist) in writing stories on political economy, a proceeding doubtless determined by the previous exercises in didactic story-telling of Miss Edgeworth and Mrs. Marcet. These _Illustrations of Political Economy_ (1832) exactly hit the taste of their time and were very popular. Her less adulterated children's books (of which the best perhaps is _Feats on the Fiord_) and her novel _Deerbrook_ (1839), owing much to Miss Edgeworth in conception, display a good faculty of narrative, and she did a great deal of miscellaneous work. As she became less religious she became more superstitious, and indulged in curious crazes. She lived latterly at the Lakes, and died on 27th June 1876. Harriet Martineau was the object of rather absurd obloquy from Conservative critics as an advanced woman in her day, and of still more absurd eulogy by Liberal sympathisers both in that day and since. Personally she seems to have been amiable and estimable enough. Intellectually she had no genius; but she had a good deal of the versatile talent and craftsmanship for which the literary conditions of this century have produced unusual stimulus and a fair reward.