Harriet Martineau (1802 - 1876) was an English writer and philosopher, renowned in her day as a controversial journalist, political economist, abolitionist and life-long feminist. Martineau has also been called the first female sociologist and the first female journalist in England.
 
From Preface........THE Times of September 16th, 1857, begins its leading article thus. "It is not saying much, perhaps, but there are few countries and few histories about which the English know less than they do about India." Whether this statement is true in its whole breadth or not, it expresses the view under which this volume was proposed by myself, and encouraged by persons who are better judges than I can be of the amount of existing knowledge of India and its affairs. The aim of the work, and the, treatment of its subject, are as humble as can well be. I simply wish to put in the way of offers a convenience which I should often have been glad of myself for obtaining a general notion of what our Indian empire is, how we came by it, and what has gone forward in it since it first became connected with England. I have adhered strictly to the object of the book, because I had not scope for anything beyond narrative. To form a judgment on past transactions, and speculations on future destinies, would have been at least as interesting to myself as relating