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Harriet Beecher Stowe | |
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The author of the mid-19th-century best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin was a tireless advocate for the abolition of slavery, temperance in the use of alcohol, and getting the vote for women. |
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Born in Litchfield CT, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was the daughter of a minister whose rigorous life was a testament to his Puritan beliefs. A teacher and author, Stowe was living in Brunswick, Maine, site of Bowdoin College, while she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin (1850). Her poignant novel about a runaway slave became a huge national bestseller, with 300,000 copies sold within a year of publication. Even though the novel was not specifically anti-slavery or pro-Abolition, it became an Abolitionist favorite, changing the laisez-faire attitude of many in the northern states to one of active disapproval of slavery. The novel was translated, published and read abroad as well. Stowe raised six children, kept house, wrote novels, poems, essays and magazine articles, and worked tirelessly for temperance and women's suffrage as well as the abolition of slavery. You can visit her house in Hartford CT at Nook Farm, next to the house of another famous 19th-century author: Mark Twain.
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Above, Harriet
Beecher Stowe.
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