Harriet Beecher Stowe Popular Books

Harriet Beecher Stowe Biography & Facts

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe (; June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American author and abolitionist. She came from the religious Beecher family and wrote the popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which depicts the harsh conditions experienced by enslaved African Americans. The book reached an audience of millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and in Great Britain, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. Stowe wrote 30 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings as well as for her public stances and debates on social issues of the day. Life and work Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811. She was the sixth of 11 children born to outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher. Her mother was his first wife, Roxana (Foote), a deeply religious woman who died when Stowe was only five years old. Roxana's maternal grandfather was General Andrew Ward of the Revolutionary War. Harriet's siblings included a sister, Catharine Beecher, who became an educator and author, as well as brothers who became ministers: including Henry Ward Beecher, who became a famous preacher and abolitionist, Charles Beecher, and Edward Beecher.Harriet enrolled in the Hartford Female Seminary run by her older sister Catharine, where she received a traditional academic education — rather uncommon for women at the time — with a focus in the Classics, languages, and mathematics. Among her classmates was Sarah P. Willis, who later wrote under the pseudonym Fanny Fern.In 1832, at the age of 21, Harriet Beecher moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to join her father, who had become the president of Lane Theological Seminary. There, she also joined the Semi-Colon Club, a literary salon and social club whose members included the Beecher sisters, Caroline Lee Hentz, Salmon P. Chase (future governor of Ohio and United States Secretary of the Treasury under President Lincoln), Emily Blackwell and others. Cincinnati's trade and shipping business on the Ohio River was booming, drawing numerous migrants from different parts of the country, including many escaped slaves, bounty hunters seeking them, and Irish immigrants who worked on the state's canals and railroads. In 1829 the ethnic Irish attacked blacks, wrecking areas of the city, trying to push out these competitors for jobs. Beecher met a number of African Americans who had suffered in those attacks, and their experience contributed to her later writing about slavery. Riots took place again in 1836 and 1841, driven also by native-born anti-abolitionists.Harriet was also influenced by the Lane Debates on Slavery. The biggest event ever to take place at Lane, it was the series of debates held on 18 days in February 1834, between colonization and abolition defenders, decisively won by Theodore Weld and other abolitionists. Elisabeth attended most of the debates.: 171  Her father and the trustees, afraid of more violence from anti-abolitionist whites, prohibited any further discussions of the topic. The result was a mass exodus of the Lane students, together with a supportive trustee and a professor, who moved as a group to the new Oberlin Collegiate Institute after its trustees agreed, by a close and acrimonious vote, to accept students regardless of "race", and to allow discussions of any topic. It was in the literary club at Lane that she met Rev. Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower who was a professor of Biblical Literature at the seminary. The two married at the Seminary on January 6, 1836. The Stowes had seven children, including twin daughters. Uncle Tom's Cabin and Civil War Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, prohibiting assistance to fugitives and strengthening sanctions even in free states. At the time, Stowe had moved with her family to Brunswick, Maine, where her husband was now teaching at Bowdoin College. Their home near the campus is protected as a National Historic Landmark. The Stowes were ardent critics of slavery and supported the Underground Railroad, temporarily housing several fugitive slaves in their home. One fugitive from slavery, John Andrew Jackson, wrote of hiding with Stowe in her house in Brunswick as he fled to Canada in his narrative titled "The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina" (London: Passmore & Albaster, 1862).Stowe claimed to have had a vision of a dying slave during a communion service at Brunswick's First Parish Church, which inspired her to write his story. What also likely allowed her to empathize with slaves was the loss of her eighteen-month-old son, Samuel Charles Stowe. She noted, "Having experienced losing someone so close to me, I can sympathize with all the poor, powerless slaves at the unjust auctions. You will always be in my heart Samuel Charles Stowe." On March 9, 1850, Stowe wrote to Gamaliel Bailey, editor of the weekly anti-slavery journal The National Era, that she planned to write a story about the problem of slavery: "I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak ... I hope every woman who can write will not be silent." Shortly after in June 1851, when she was 40, the first installment of Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in serial form in the newspaper The National Era. She originally used the subtitle "The Man That Was a Thing", but it was soon changed to "Life Among the Lowly". Installments were published weekly from June 5, 1851, to April 1, 1852. For the newspaper serialization of her novel, Stowe was paid $400. Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in book form on March 20, 1852, by John P. Jewett with an initial print run of 5,000 copies. Each of its two volumes included three illustrations and a title-page designed by Hammatt Billings. In less than a year, the book sold an unprecedented 300,000 copies. By December, as sales began to wane, Jewett issued an inexpensive edition at 37½ cents each to stimulate sales. Sales abroad, as in Britain where the book was a great success, earned Stowe nothing as there was no international copyright agreement in place during that era. In 1853 Stowe undertook a lecture tour of Britain and, to make up the royalties that she could not receive there, the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery set up Uncle Tom's Offering.According to Daniel R. Vollaro, the goal of the book was to educate Northerners on the realistic horrors of the things that were happening in the South. The other purpose was to try to make people in the South feel more empathetic towards the people they were forcing into slavery. The book's emotional portrayal of the effects of slavery on individuals captured the nation's attention. Stowe showed that slavery touched all of society, beyond the people directly involved as masters, traders and slaves. Her novel added to the debate abou.... Discover the Harriet Beecher Stowe popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Harriet Beecher Stowe books.

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  • Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Charles Edward Stowe compiles biographical correspondence written by his mother, novelist Harriet Beecher Stowe. The book includes blackandwhite illustrations.

  • Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    In 1852, the United States of America was anything but united. The divisive issue of slavery was roiling the nation, which argued ad nauseam about the extension of slavery in new s...

  • The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Cindy Weinstein

    The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe establishes new parameters for both scholarly and classroom discussion of Beecher Stowe's writing and life. This collection of spec...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Martha Foote Crow

    With centuries of literature, it's inevitable that some will fall through the cracks. We hunt down public domain works and restore them so they're not lost to the world. Who are w...

  • 12 Years A Slave synopsis, comments

    12 Years A Slave

    Solomon Northup

    The extraordinary true story of Solomon Northup, a free AfricanAmerican living in New York in 1841, who was kidnapped, sold into slavery, and subjected to unimaginable degradation ...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Joan D. Hedrick

    "Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject....But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a w...

  • The Collected Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    The Collected Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe & Catharine Esther Beecher

    This comprehensive eBook presents the complete works or all the significant works the Œuvre of this famous and brilliant writer in one ebook 14860 pages easytoread and easytonav...

  • Why We should Trust Harriet Beecher Stowe. synopsis, comments

    Why We should Trust Harriet Beecher Stowe.

    Nineteenth-Century Prose

    I propose in this article to show how these women writers took part in a discourse that most have considered male. The sentimental authors desperately wanted to persuade their audi...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Martha Foote Crow

    This volume contains a biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe geared more toward adolescent readers. This book was created from a scan of the original artifact, and as such the text o...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Charles E. Stowe

    Es scheint mir passend, dass ich meiner Biografie einige einleitende Worte vorausschicke.Schon seit vielen Jahren hege ich den Wunsch, Erinnerungen aus meinem Leben zu hinterlassen...

  • Delphi Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Delphi Complete Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Following the 1851 publication of ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin’, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s monumental classic quickly reached an audience of millions across the world. Stowe’s portrayal o...

  • Wrestling With His Angel synopsis, comments

    Wrestling With His Angel

    Sidney Blumenthal

    The “magisterial” (The New York Times Book Review) second volume of Sidney Blumenthal’s acclaimed, landmark biography, The Political Life of Abraham Lincoln, reveals the future pre...

  • Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    This biography is derived from letters and other writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe and was published by Annie Fields, a friend of the author. It follows on from an earlier biograph...

  • The Greater Journey synopsis, comments

    The Greater Journey

    David McCullough

    The #1 bestseller that tells the remarkable story of the generations of American artists, writers, and doctors who traveled to Paris, fell in love with the city and its people, and...

  • Brave Companions synopsis, comments

    Brave Companions

    David McCullough

    From Alexander von Humboldt to Charles and Anne Lindbergh, these are stories of people of great vision and daring whose achievements continue to inspire us today, brilliantly told ...

  • Twelve Years a Slave synopsis, comments

    Twelve Years a Slave

    Solomon Northup

    The shocking firsthand account of one man’s remarkable fight for freedom; now an awardwinning motion picture.‘Why had I not died in my young years – before God had given me childre...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Elisabeth Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. She came from a famous religious family and is best known for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. It depicts the h...

  • Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Works of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    The essential collection of books by Harriet Beecher Stowe, including Uncle Tom's Cabin, with a navigable table of contents: The American Woman's Home Betty's Bright I...

  • Autobiography of Josiah Henson synopsis, comments

    Autobiography of Josiah Henson

    Josiah Henson

    Firsthand account by the man widely regarded as the person who provided much of the material for the revered character in Uncle Tom's Cabin. Henson recalls his childhood, forced se...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Charles Edward Stowe

    Harriet Beecher Stowe's son, Charles Edward Beecher, originally published a biography of her life compiled from her letters in 1889, just a handful of years prior to her death....

  • Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Philip Mcfarland

    The author of Hawthorne in Concord “brings [Stowe] to life in all her glory, in a book at once so dramatic and so subtle that it rivals the best fiction” (Debby Applegate, author o...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Shmoop

    "Dive deep into the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe's life anywhere you go: on a plane, on a mountain, in a canoe, under a tree. Or grab a flashlight and read Shmoop under the cover...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Biography for Girls synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe, A Biography for Girls

    Martha Foote Crow

    Excerpt: ?In a little saucerlike valley of the lower Berkshires, where the hills stand about in a wide circle, lies that most beautiful of Connecticut villages, Litchfield. Here Ha...

  • Harriet Beecher Stowe synopsis, comments

    Harriet Beecher Stowe

    Nancy Koester

    "So you're the little woman who started this big war," Abraham Lincoln is said to have quipped when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin converted readers...

  • Creationists synopsis, comments

    Creationists

    E.L. Doctorow

    E. L. Doctorow is acclaimed internationally for such novels as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, and The March. Now here are Doctorow’s rich, revelatory essays on the nature of imaginative ...