Harriet Jane Hanson Robinson (February 8, 1825 – December 22, 1911) worked as a bobbin doffer in a Massachusetts cotton mill and was involved in a turnout, became a poet and author, and played an important role in the women's suffrage movement in the United States.

Harriet was the daughter of Harriet Browne Hanson and the carpenter William Hanson. Both parents were descended from early English settlers but without distinguished ancestors. Her elder brother was John Wesley Hanson (1823–1901), and she had two surviving younger brothers: Benjamin and William. Harriet's father died when she was five, which left his widow to support four young children.

Harriet's mother was determined to keep her family together, despite the difficulty in doing so. Harriet later recalled in her autobiography Loom and Spindle (Hanson Robinson 1898) her mother's response after a neighbour had offered to adopt Harriet so that her mother had one less mouth to feed: "No; while I have one meal of victuals a day, I will not part with my children." She later wrote that her mother's words on that occasion stuck with her "because of the word 'victuals'", whose meaning she wondered for a long time thereafter.

Initially, Mrs. Hanson ran a small store in Boston, Massachusetts, which sold food, candy, and firewood. The family lived in the back room of the shop, all sharing one bed "two at the foot and three at the head," as Harriet would later recall. At the invitation of Harriet's maternal aunt, Angeline Cudworth, also a widow, the family moved to Lowell, Massachusetts, a center of the textile industry.

Lowell was a planned mill town. Under the Lowell System, the company recruited young women (15-35) from New England farms to work in the mills. The companies built boardinghouses managed by older women, often widows, to provide meals and safe places to live. Churches and cultural organizations offered lectures, concerts, reading rooms, improvement circles and other cultural and educational opportunities. Another attraction were good cash wages compared to domestic work and teaching, which paid much less.

Mrs. Hanson obtained a job as a boardinghouse keeper for the Tremont Mills in Lowell, Massachusetts. During the summer of 1836, Harriet started to work part-time at the Tremont Mills. By her own account, she wanted to work to be able to earn money for herself, and the experience was good for her. However, there may have been an element of necessity since her mother earned little money from running the boarding house. Her job, which paid $2 per week, was as a "doffer," who replaced full bobbins with empty ones. The job took only a quarter of each hour, and during the free periods, the boys and girls could play or read or even go home for a while.

In 1836, the Lowell Mill Girls organized another strike, or "turn out" as they called them. The first strike had been in 1834 over a 15% cut in wages. The second strike was over an increase in board charges that was equivalent to a 12.5% cut in wages. To Harriet, who was eleven, it was her first "turn out." In her autobiography, she recounted it with pride:

When the day came on which the girls were to turn out, those in the upper rooms started first, and so many of them left that our mill was at once shut down. Then, when the girls in my room stood irresolute, uncertain what to do, asking each other, "Would you?" or "Shall we turn out?" and not one of them having the courage to lead off, I, who began to think they would not go out, after all their talk, became impatient, and started on ahead, saying, with childish bravado, "I don't care what you do, I am going to turn out, whether any one else does or not"; and I marched out, and was followed by the others.