Untangling Concepts of Objectivity in Nineteenth-Century Social Reform: Harriet Martineau and Henry Mayhew Observe Urban Poverty

Abstract

Abstract This article examines emerging concepts of objectivity in the work of Harriet Martineau and Henry Mayhew. It focuses on Martineau's How to Observe Morals and Manners (1838) and Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861), documenting how ideas about objectivity appeared in journalism and popular writing by these two prolific nineteenth-century social commentators.