Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) is best known as the author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, which played a significant role in the outbreak of the American Civil War. Stowe wrote the work in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal to assist an escaped slave.
After the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Stowe became an international celebrity and a popular author. In addition to novels, poetry and essays, she wrote non-fiction books on a wide range of subjects including homemaking and the raising of children, and religion. She wrote in an informal conversational style, and presented herself as an average wife and mother.
Early Life
Born in Litchfield, Connecticut and raised primarily in Hartford, she was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, an abolitionist Congregationalist preacher from Boston and Roxana Foote Beecher, and the sister of renowned minister, Henry Ward Beecher. She had two other prominent and activist siblings, a brother, Charles Beecher, and a sister, Catharine Beecher. In 1832, her family moved to Cincinnati, another hotbed of the abolitionist movement, where her father became the first president of Lane Theological Seminary. There she gained first-hand knowledge of slavery and the Underground railroad and was moved to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, the first major American novel with an African-American hero.
In 1836 Harriet Beecher married Calvin Stowe, a clergyman and widower. Later she and her husband moved to Brunswick, Maine, when he obtained an academic position at Bowdoin College. Harriet and Calvin had seven children, but some died in early childhood. Her first children, twin girls Hattie and Eliza, were born on September 29, 1836. Four years later, in 1840, her son Frederick William was born. In 1848 the birth of Samuel Charles occurred, but in the following year, he died from a cholera epidemic. She is buried on the grounds of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts.[1]
The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati, Ohio is the former home of her father Lyman Beecher on the former campus of the Lane Seminary. Harriet lived here until her marriage. It is open to the public and operated as an historical and cultural site, focusing on Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Lane Seminary and the Underground Railroad. The site also presents African-American history. The Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati is located at 2950 Gilbert Avenue, Cincinnati, OH 45206. [1]
Writing career
'Uncle Tom's Cabin sold more than 10,000 copies the first week and was a best seller of its day. In the story 'Uncle Tom' is bought and sold three times and finally beaten to death by his last owner. The book was quickly translated into 37 languages and it sold over half a million copies in the United States over five years. The book was turned into a play that also became very popular.
As an was an abolitionist and writer the most famous forUncle Tom's Cabin which describes life in slavery, and which was first published in serial form from 1851 to 1852 in an abolitionist organ, the National Era, edited by Gamaliel Bailey.
Thorugh out the years of 1862 and 1864,HB was able to write at least a book a year during that time. She was determined to keep the issue of slavery, the damage it inflicted upon the very foundation for which America was founded. Harriet was able to point out very graphically, the fact that we as humankind could not allow this to continue.
Harriet went on to publish A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, a non-fiction work documenting the veracity of her depiction of the lives of slaves in the original novel.
Her second novel was Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp: another anti-slavery novel.
Quotations
"When you get into a tight place and everything goes against you, until it seems as though you could not hold on a minute longer, never give up then, for that is just the time and place that the tide will turn."
"Common sense is seeing things as they are;and doing things as they ought to be."
"What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness,is a certain quality of magnanimity & greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of heroic."
"To be really great in the little things, to be truly noble and heroic in the insipid details of everyday life, is a virtue so rare to be worthy of canonization."
"The past, the present and the future are really one; they are today."
"One would like to be grand and heroic, if one could; but if not,why try at all? One wants to be very something, very great, very heroic;or if not that, then at least try.It is this everlasting mediocrity that bores me."
"No one is so throughly superstitious as the godless man."
"Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn."
"Most mothers are instintive philosophers."
"In the ranks of life the human heart yearns for the beautiful; and the beautiful things that God makes are His gift to all alike."
"I am speaking now of the highest duty we owe our friends, the noblest, the most sacred-that of keeping their own nobleness, goodness, pure and incorrupt."
"Everyone confesses that exertion which brings out all the powers of body and mind is the best thing for us; but most people do all they can to get rid of it, and as a general rule nobody does much more than circumstances drive them to do."
"A little reflection will enable any person to detect in himself that setness in trifles which is the result of the unwatched instinct of self-will and to establish over himself a jealous guardianship."
Partial list of works
- Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851)
- A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853)
- Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856)
- The Minister's Wooing (1859)
- The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862)
- As "Christopher Crowfield"
- House and Home Papers (1865)
- Little Foxes (1866)
- The Chimney Corner (1868)
- Old Town Folks (1869)
- The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown (1870)
- Lady Byron Vindicated (1870)
- My Wife and I (1871)
- Pink and White Tyranny (1871)
- We and Our Neighbors (1875)
- Poganuc People (1878)
See also
- Origins of the American Civil War
- Abolitionism
- Slavery
Credits
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/stowe/StoweHB.html
http://womenshistory.about.com/library/bio/blstowe.htm Sept 5 2006
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/h/harriet_beecher_stowe.html
Sept 5 2006
http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/37690.html Sept 1 2006
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. (2006). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved August 31, 2006, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online Library Edition: http://www.library.eb.com/eb/article-9069861 Aug 31 2006
References and further reading
- Adams, John R. (1963). Harriet Beecher Stowe. Twayne Publishers, Inc.. Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 63-17370.
- Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley, and Anne Margolis, The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women's Rights and Woman's Sphere (U of North Carolina Press, 1988),
- Matthews, Glenna. "'Little Women' Who Helped Make This Great War" in Gabor S. Boritt, ed. Why the Civil War Came - Oxford University Press pp 31-50.
- Constance Mayfield Rourke; Trumpets of Jubilee: Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lyman Beecher, Horace Greeley, P.T. Barnum (1927).
- Thulesius, Olav (2001). Harriet Beecher Stowe in Florida, 1867-1884. McFarland and Company, Inc..
- Weinstein, Cindy. The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe. Cambridge Companions to Literature (Cctl). Cambridge, England: Cambridge UP, 2004. ISBN 9780521533096 Template:Invalid isbn(pbk.); ISBN 9780521825924 Template:Invalid isbn(hbk.)
External links
- Harriet Beecher Stowe House & Center - Stowe's adulthood home in Hartford, Connecticut
- Harriet Beecher Stowe Society—Scholarly organization dedicated to the study of the life and works of Harriet Beecher Stowe
- Brief biography at Kirjasto (Pegasos)
- The Online Books Page (University of Pennsylvania)
- Works by Harriet Beecher Stowe. Project Gutenberg
- Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe Compiled From Her Letters and Journals by Her Son Charles Edward Stowe, available for free via Project Gutenberg
- Harriet Beecher Stowe's brief biography and works
- Women in History
Credits
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