“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.