Harriet Farley

Harriet Jane Farley (February 18, 1812, Claremont, New Hampshire – November 12, 1907, New York City, New York) was an American writer and abolitionist, editor of the Lowell Offering from 1842-1845, and editor of the New England Offering from 1847–1850.

Harriet Farley was the sixth of ten children born to Reverend Stephen and Lucy Farley. She grew up in Atkinson, New Hampshire and attended Atkinson Academy, a school for both boys and girls, of which her father was the principal. The Farleys were extremely poor, so at the age of fourteen, Harriet began doing piecework to earn money for her family. She was also a schoolteacher for several years, although she found that teaching was not to her liking.

In 1837, at the age of twenty-five, Harriet left New Hampshire to work in the textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts. There were high literacy rates among the young female workers of the Lowell mills, and many, like Harriet Farley, had been schoolteachers before entering factory work. It was common for these women to form writing groups, and out of one of these grew a magazine called The Lowell Offering in 1840.

Farley wrote articles and editorials for The Lowell Offering under a myriad of pseudonyms and eventually became editor in 1842; in 1843, Harriot Curtis, a fellow mill worker, became her co-editor.

Since the magazine was written by and for the mill girls, it was received with both criticism and interest by the general public. Some, including labor organizer Orestes Brownson, felt that the publication did not place enough emphasis on labor reform and the deplorable working conditions of the mills. Farley defended herself in a letter of response to his condemnation, insisting that the Offering was solely a literary magazine and had never been intended to be a political commentary.

Despite these criticisms, the material published in The Lowell Offering had widespread distribution. In 1844, an anthology of pieces from the magazine was published in Great Britain, even attracting the attention of Charles Dickens. As mill work was still a fairly new practice at this time, the Offering found a large audience abroad, especially in Europe, because it provided insight into the daily lives of mill workers.

Though she was determined to keep reform out of her publication, Farley was involved in one of the most prominent political movements of the time. In 1843, she joined the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society and soon became an influential abolitionist leader in Lowell. As part of the society, Farley helped raise money and awareness for the cause of abolitionism.

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