Her writings

In 1834 Harriet began a two year study and visit of the United States. She reported her findings in Society in America (1837) and Retrospect of Western Travel (1838). These empirical studies emerged at the same time as her foundational treatise on sociological data collection, How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838). This book articulated the principles and methods of empirical social research.

Society in America is her most widely known work to sociologists in the U.S. She addressed the issues of methodological strategy confronted with ethnocentrism. She compared valued moral principles and observable social patterns, illustrating insightfully the distinctions between rhetoric and reality.

Her writings in How to Observe Morals and Manners offered a positivist solution to the correspondence problem between inter-subjectivity, verifiable observables, and unobservable theoretical issues.

Before Marx, Engels or Weber, Martineau examined social class, religion, suicide, national character, domestic relations, women's status, criminology, and interrelations between institutions and individuals.

In 1848, after her trip to the Mid-East and the publication of her work: Eastern Life Past and Present, Harriet openly embraced atheism. She lost much of the support in her family, especially her younger brother James, a known cleric at the time. She also received a cold reception in the populous but was supported by her circle of literary friends.

In 1851 Harriet translated Comte's Cours de philosophie positive into English, facilitating the introduction of positivism into American thought.

Important writings of Martineau
1. Deerbrook, 3 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1839).
2. Eastern Life: Present and Past, 3 vols (London: Edward Moxon, 1848)
3. Harriet Martineau¹s Autobiography, 2 vols, ed Maria Weston Chapman (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co, 1877)
4. Illustrations of Political Economy, 9 vols (London: Charles Fox, 1832-34)
5. The Martyr Age of the United States (Boston: Weeks, Jordan, 1839)
6. The Positive Philosophy of Auguste ComteS, 2 vols (London: Chapman 1853)
7. Retrospect of Western Travel, 3 vols (London: Saunders and Otley, 1838)
8. Society in America, 3 vols (London: Saunders and Otley, 1837), rpr. ed Seymour Martin Lipset, (Garden City: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1961)
9. Harriet Martineau: Writings on Slavery and the American Civil War ed. Deborah Anna Logan (DeKalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 2002)

sources

http://www.brycchancarey.com/abolition/martineau.htm

http://www.websteruniv.edu/~woolflm/martineau.html