biography
| name: |
Stowe, Harriet (Elizabeth) Beecher
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| |
née Beecher
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pronunciation:
[stoh]
| sex:
| female
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| lived:
| (1811–96)
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| biography:
| Writer, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, USA, the daughter of Lyman Beecher. Raised by her severe Calvinist father, she was educated and then taught at the Hartford Female Seminary (founded by her sister Catherine Beecher). Moving to Cincinnati with her father (1832), she began to write sketches and short fiction, and after her marriage (1836) persevered in her writing while raising seven children. In 1850 her husband took up a post as professor of religion at Bowdoin College, ME, and there she began work on Uncle Tom's Cabin. It appeared in weekly installments in the National Era (1851–2) and was published as a two-volume novel in 1852; it became an instant and controversial best-seller, both in the USA and abroad. She made three trips to Europe during the 1850s, where she was befriended by major literary figures. The novel had a major impact on Northerners' attitudes towards slavery, and by the beginning of the Civil War had sold more than a million copies. She followed this spectacular success with many works of fiction, biographies, children's books, travelogues, theological works, temperance tracts, and practical works on housekeeping (including co-authoring with sister Catherine, The American Woman's Home, 1869), but nothing she wrote ever approached the success of her first novel. |
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