For a time, notwithstanding the kind brother’s advice to Harriet, to leave sewing to other women and devote herself to literature, pressure was brought upon her to get her living by needlework instead of by her pen. She tried to follow both the advice of her friends and her own inclinations. By day she pored over fine needlework, by night she studied and wrote till two or three o’clock in the morning. Instead of being crushed by the double strain, her spirit rose victorious over it. “It was truly _life_ I lived during those days,” she wrote, “of strong, intellectual, and moral effort.” And again: “Yet I was very happy; the deep-felt sense of progress and expansion was delightful; and so was the exertion of all my faculties, and, not least, that of will to overcome any obstructions, and force my way to that power of public speech of which I believed myself more or less worthy.” Her first marked literary success was the winning of each of three prizes which had been offered by the Unitarian body for essays presenting the arguments in favour of Unitarianism to the notice of Catholics, Jews, and Mohammedans. She took every precaution to prevent the discovery that her three essays were by the same hand; and great was the sensation caused by the discovery that this was indeed the case. The most important result to herself of this achievement was that it finally silenced those who wished her to believe that she was fit to do nothing more difficult in the world than bead-work and embroidery. It also set her up in funds to the extent of £45, and she immediately began to plan the work which brought her fame—a series of tales illustrating the most important doctrines of political economy, such as the effect of machinery on wages, the relation of wages and population, free trade, protective duties, and so on. The difficulties she encountered, before she could induce any publisher to accept her series, were such as would have broken any spirit less heroic and determined than her own. “I knew the work wanted doing,” she said, “and that I could do it”; and this confidence prevented her from losing heart when one rebuff after another fell upon her. Almost every publisher to whom she applied repeated the cry that the public would attend to nothing at that time (1831) but the cholera and the Reform Bill. She says she became as sick of the Reform Bill as poor King William himself. At length, after a most exhausting and, to any one else, heart-breaking succession of disappointments, her series was accepted, but on terms that made her success in finding a publisher very little pleasure to her. The first stipulation was that 500 copies of the work must be subscribed for before publication, and the agreement was to cease if a thousand copies did not sell in the first fortnight. The dismal business of obtaining subscribers to an unknown work by an unknown author nearly broke her down. But in her darkest hour, alone in London, without money or friends, leaning over