Life among the Lowly
Harriet Beecher Stowe, a prolific writer best remembered today for
Uncle Tom's Cabin, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14,
1811, into a prominent New England family. Her father, Lyman
Beecher, was a well-known Congregational minister, and her brother
Henry Ward Beecher became a distinguished preacher, orator, and
lecturer. Like all the Beechers she grew up with a strong sense of
wanting to improve humanity. At the age of thirteen Harriet Beecher
enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary and subsequently taught
there until 1832, when the family moved to Cincinnati. In Ohio she
was an instructor at a school founded by her elder sister
Catharine, and she soon began publishing short stories in the
Western Monthly Magazine.
Four years later, in 1836, Harriet Beecher married Calvin Stowe, a
respected biblical scholar and theologian by whom she had seven
children. In order to supplement the family's meager income she
continued writing. The Mayflower, her first collection of stories
and sketches, appeared in 1843. During this period abolitionist
conflicts rocked Cincinnati, and Mrs. Stowe witnessed firsthand the
misery of slaves living just across the Ohio River in Kentucky. But
not until the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was she
inspired to write about their plight. After the family resettled in
Brunswick, Maine, when Mr. Stowe was hired as a professor at
Bowdoin College, she began working on a novel that would expose the
evils of slavery.
First serialized in the National Era, an abolitionist paper, in
forty weekly installments between June 5, 1851, and April 1, 1852,
and published as a book on March 20, 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin was an
enormous success. Tolstoy deemed it a great work of literature
'flowing from love of God and man,' and within a year the book had
sold more than 300,000 copies. When Uncle Tom's Cabin appeared in
Great Britain Queen Victoria sent Mrs. Stowe a note of gratitude,
and enthusiastic crowds greeted the author in London on her first
trip abroad in 1853. In an attempt to silence the many critics at
home who denounced the work as vicious propaganda, Mrs. Stowe
brought out A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1853, which contained
documentary evidence substantiating the graphic picture of slavery
she had drawn. Dred (1856), a second antislavery novel, did not
enjoy the acclaim of Uncle Tom's Cabin, yet the author had already
stirred the conscience of the nation and the world, fueling
sentiments that would ignite the Civil War. When Abraham Lincoln
met her at the White House in 1862 he allegedly remarked- 'So
you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great
war!'
In subsequent novels Stowe shifted her attention away from the
issue of slavery. Beginning with The Minister's Wooing (1859), and
continuing with The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Oldtown Folks
(1869), and Poganuc People (1878), she presented a perceptive and
realistic chronicle of colonial New England, focusing especially on
the theological warfare that underscored Puritan life. In a second
and less popular series of novels-My Wife and I (1871), Pink and
White Tyranny (1871), and We and Our Neighbors (1875)-she depicted
the mores of post-Civil War America. Mrs. Stowe did enjoy success,
however, with the controversial Lady Byron Vindicated (1870), a
bold defense of her friend Anne, Lady Byron, that scandalously
revealed Lord Byron's moral delinquency. In addition she became a
regular contributor to the Atlantic Monthly, which published many
of the memorable short stories later collected in Oldtown Fireside
Stories (1872) and Sam Lawson's Oldtown Fireside Stories
(1881).
Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote little during the last years of her
life. She died in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 1, 1896. Perhaps
Mrs. Stowe's achievement
"Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most powerful and enduring work of art
ever written about American slavery."
—Alfred Kazin
"Uncle Tom's Cabin is the most powerful and enduring work of art
ever written about American slavery."
-Alfred Kazin
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