Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811, the seventh child
of a famous protestant preacher. Harriet worked as a teacher
with her older sister Catharine: her earliest publication
was a geography for children, issued under her sister's name
in 1833. In 1836, Harriet married widower Calvin Stowe: they
eventually had seven children. Stowe helped to support her
family financially by writing for local and religious
periodicals. During her life, she wrote poems, travel books,
biographical sketches, and children's books, as well as
adult novels. She met and corresponded with people as varied
as Lady Byron, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George Eliot. She
died at the age of 85, in Hartford Conneticutt. While she wrote at least ten adult novels, Harriet Beecher
Stowe is predominantly known for her first, Uncle Tom's
Cabin (1852). Begun as a serial for the Washington
anti-slavery weekly, the National Era, it focused public
interest on the issue of slavery, and was deeply
controversial. In writing the book, Stowe drew on her
personal experience: she was familiar with slavery, the
antislavery movement, and the underground railroad because
Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnatti, Ohio,
where Stowe had lived, was a slave state. Following
publication of the book, she became a celebrity, speaking
against slavery both in America and Europe. She wrote A Key
to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) extensively documenting the
realities on which the book was based, to refute critics who
tried to argue that it was inauthentic; and published a
second anti-slavery novel, Dred in1856. In 1862, when she
visited President Lincoln, legend claims that he greeted her
as "the little lady who made this big war": the war between
the states. Campaigners for other social changes, such as
Caroline Norton, respected and drew upon her work. The historical significance of Stowe's antislavery writing
has tended to draw attention away from her other work, and
from her work's literary significance. Her work is
admittedly uneven. At its worst, it indulges in a
romanticized Christian sensibility that was much in favour
with the audience of her time, but that finds little
sympathy or credibility with modern readers. At her best,
Stowe was a early and effective realist. Her settings are
often accurately and detailedly described. Her portraits of
local social life, particularly with minor characters,
reflect an awareness of the complexity of the culture she
lived in, and an ability to communicate that culture to
others. In her commitment to realism, and her serious
narrative use of local dialect, Stowe predated works like
Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn by 30 years, and influenced
later regionalist writers including Sarah Orne Jewett and
Mary Wilkins Freeman.
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Series
Books:Uncle Tom's Cabin, February 1983
Paperback (reprint)
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