Harriet Martineau

Augustus Egg was a successful Victorian genre painter who was a member of The Clique, a group of artists whose number included Richard Dadd and William Powell Frith.

Harriet Martineau was a revered author and social reformer who wrote more than 50 books on subjects such as Society in America and Household Education, as well as novels and guides, including a volume on the Lake District, where she lived from 1845.

As well as being deaf from about the age of 20, Martineau suffered from ill health and lived in Tynemouth from 1840 to 1845, where she would recline at her window, looking out to the estuary, until a cure by mesmerism led to her recovery.