Women's Political Economy and the Popularization of Malthus in England, 1815-1835

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Date

2020-09-24

Authors

Simmerman, Christopher

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Publisher

University of Oregon

Abstract

In England during the early 19th century, women wrote popular texts of political economy. A major function of those texts was to popularize the thought of prominent political economists. This thesis compares the writings of four female popularizers—Maria Edgeworth, Jane Haldimand Marcet, Harriet Martineau, and Margracia Ryves Loudon—to those of the political economist Thomas Robert Malthus. Three subjects are considered: population, the Poor Laws, and the Corn Laws. This thesis argues that Edgeworth, Marcet, and Martineau distilled Malthus’ principle of population into didactic literature; that Marcet and Martineau popularized Malthus’ anti-Poor Law arguments while supplementing them with original contentions and later advocating for the reforms of the New Poor Law; and that Marcet, Martineau, and Loudon argued in favor of abolishing the Corn Laws in spite of Malthus’ protectionism. Female popularizers thus had an ambivalent relationship with Malthus’ political economy.

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Keywords

classical economics, intellectual history, knowledge circulation, Malthus, political economy, popularization

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