Stowe, Harriet (Elizabeth) Beecher

Stowe, Harriet [Elizabeth] Beecher (1811–96),daughter of Lyman Beecher, was reared in Connecticut under the Calvinist tutelage of her father. Her youth was one of morbid introspection, tempered partly by the liberal beliefs of her uncle, Samuel Foote, and the reading of such romantic fiction as that of Scott, which influenced her own later work. In 1832 she moved with her family to Cincinnati, where she taught at a girls' school, and began to write sketches of New England life. In 1836 she married C.E. Stowe, who was then a professor in her father's theological seminary. She observed the life of slaves during a visit to Kentucky, was influenced by the antislavery sentiment prevailing at her father's school, and stored impressions that she used later in fiction.

Upon moving to Maine (1850), she was stirred more than ever by antislavery discussion and availed herself of leisure time to write Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which brought her nationwide prominence. Although she was not an Abolitionist, her supporters were, and to defend herself from attacks on the accuracy of her book she wrote A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), a compilation of facts drawn from laws, court records, newspapers, and private letters. At the height of her fame, she made a trip to England (1853), where she was enthusiastically received, and of which she wrote in Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (1854). To further the antislavery cause, she wrote her second novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), which showed the demoralizing influence of slavery upon the whites.

After another trip abroad, during which she was honored by Queen Victoria, Mrs. Stowe returned to begin the writing of a series of books set in New England and having fiction rather than propaganda for their purpose. The Minister's Wooing (1859) was a romance partly based on her sister's life, and contained an attack on the injustices of Calvinism, a religion that she eventually deserted. The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862) was another novel using New England local color, as was also Oldtown Folks (1869). In 1869 she again went abroad and met Lady Byron, from whom she obtained the information she published in Lady Byron Vindicated (1870). Her charge that Byron had had incestuous relations with his sister caused her to be accused of scandal mongering, and turned a great part of the English public against her.

She returned to New England themes in Sam Lawson's Oldtown Fireside Stories (1872), and in Poganuc People (1878) she wrote a novel closely based on her own childhood. Agnes of Sorrento (1862) is a historical novel set in Italy; Pink and White Tyranny (1871), a social satire; and My Wife and I (1871), a fictional essay defending woman's right to a career, which had as its sequel We and Our Neighbors (1875). Her Religious Poems was published in 1867, and some of her many lesser works were issued under the pseudonym Christopher Crowfield. After the Civil War, Mrs. Stowe lived mainly in Florida, and she described her quiet life there in Palmetto‐Leaves (1873).