Profile of Harriet Beecher Stowe on Famous Like Me

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, born Harriet Elizabeth Beecher (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an abolitionist, and writer of more than 10 books, the most famous being Uncle 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.

Her second novel was Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, another anti-slavery novel.

Born in Litchfield, Connecticut and raised primarily in Hartford, she was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, an abolitionist Congregationalist preacher from Boston, and the sister of renowned minister, Henry Ward 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 Bowdoin College, when he obtained an academic position there. 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 occured, but in the following year, he died from a cholera epidemic.

Quotation

• When Stowe met Abraham Lincoln in 1862 (during the Civil War), he reportedly greeted her, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

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)
• Little Foxes (1866)
• Old Town Folks (1869)
• The Ghost in the Cap'n Brown (1870)
• Poganuc People (1878)

Related articles

• Origins of the American Civil War
• Abolitionism
• Slavery

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