Political Economy and Feminist Politics

Abstract

The Illustrations of Political Economy was published initially in twenty-four phenomenally successful monthly volumes. As the only person who believed that such a work was ‘craved by the popular mind’, Martineau had some difficulty in finding a publisher, and she was forced to arrive at highly unfavourable terms with Charles Fox, the brother of the Reverend William Johnson Fox, editor of the Monthly Repository: publication by subscription, profits to be shared, and the bulk of subscriptions solicited by the author. Discouraged by the conditions and unconvinced she would find any supporters, Martineau characteristically persisted and wrote the first Tale – which turned out to be astonishingly popular. Readers awaited monthly publication of the Illustrations with a fervour similar to that displayed in anticipation of the newest number of a serialised novel, and from that time, Martineau recalls, she ‘never had any other anxiety about employment than what to choose, nor any real care about money’ (A., 1:178). The principal source for the Tales was James Mill’s Elements of Political Economy and the notion of didactic narratives for the ‘popular mind’ taken from Jane Marcet’s Conversations on Political Economy published in 1816.