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Harriet Beecher Stowe | |
| 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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