“I Am, My Dear Slanderer, Your Faithful Malignant Demon”: Harriet Martineau and the Westminster Review’ s Comtist Coterie

Between 1852 and 1858, Harriet Martineau contributed to the Westminster Review under John Chapman’s editorship. This discussion outlines Martineau’s relationship with the Westminster Review as a writer, as part of the cutting-edge socio-literary Chapman circle, and as an investor who, for a time, held its mortgage. Martineau’s financial investment proved to be ill-advised, as did her professional involvement with the bohemian “Comtist coterie” that congregated at 142 Strand. Circumstances shaping this history include public and private, familial and professional, the morally high-handed and scandalous, comprising a lively melodrama that involved some of the most prominent literati of the 1850s.