Harriet Beecher Stowe
1 book analyzed
Biography
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was the daughter of Lyman Beecher, one of America's most prominent Calvinist ministers, and grew up in a family that treated moral questions as matters of life and death. She lived in Cincinnati, Ohio — directly across the river from the slave state of Kentucky — for eighteen years, where she witnessed the realities of slavery and the fugitive slave trade firsthand. She harbored escapees, interviewed formerly enslaved people, and absorbed the testimonies that would fuel her novel. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which compelled Northern citizens to assist in capturing escapees, enraged her into writing. She composed Uncle Tom's Cabin as a serial for the National Era newspaper in 1851-52, reportedly telling her family that God wrote it through her. The novel sold 300,000 copies in its first year — an unprecedented figure — and made Stowe the most famous woman in America. She spent the rest of her career defending the novel's accuracy and advocating for abolition, but never again produced a work of comparable impact.