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Sociologically speaking, Harriet Martineau wrote an important letter to one of her publishers, John Chapman, on 23 April 1851. Here, she announced her "notion" to translate Auguste Comte 's Philosophie Positive. The end result was no small matter in the history of sociology: Martineau' s translation, underwritten by Edward Lombe and published by Chapman, effectively introduced Comte 's founding sociological treatise to large numbers of English-speaking readers for the first time in a comprehensive and detailed manner. It was a brave project, all the more so given Martineau's assessment of the state of English publishing. The full story of the Comte-Martineau connection lies beyond the scope of this introduction, especially as a nicely drawn account is readily provided elsewhere by Susan Hoecker-Drysdale.1 The complete text of Martineau's letter is furnished below. Mary Jo Deegan and I purchased this unique Martineau letter from Phy His Tholin, an Evanston, Illinois, bookseller specializing in works related to early women writers. The manuscript was at one time owned by Clement King Shorter (1857-1926), aprolific writer on Victorian literature and a former editor of the Illustrated London News and, later, the Sphere.2 Shorter (or some previous owner) had the four-page letter expertly "tipped in" to the first volume of a handsome, quarter-bound copy of the London second edition of Martineau's Autobiography. We consider it a special privilege to hold this letter in stewardship for future disciplinary historians.
Martineau's letter opens, in reply to a query posed by John Chapman, with an estimate of the character of Edward Lombe, a wealthy country gentleman. Chapman apparently appraised Lombe of Martineau's growing interest in translating Comte and Lombe subsequently provided ?500 to support work. Chapman, who in 1851 published the controversial Letters on the Laws of Man 's Nature and Development by Henry Atkinson and Harriet Martineau, brought out the latter's two-volume edition of Comte in 1853.
Martineau' s A utobiography and her preface to Comte 's Positive Philosophy provide vital particulars about her decision to translate and condense Comte 's massive work. The following letter adds to those details. An extract, below, from Martineau's Autobiography, describing her activities during the month of April, 1851, provides an instructive prologue showing the chronological context of the letter:
My course of lectures on English...