Stowe, Harriet Beecher

(1811–96)

   Philanthropist and Polemicist.

   Stowe was born Harriet Beecher in Litchfield, Connecticut. Her father became president of the Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, in 1832 where her future husband was one of the professors. The couple were committed abolitionists. They sheltered runaway slaves in their house and worked doggedly for the cause. Stowe was a prolific author, but she is mainly remembered for her Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was first published in serialised form in 1851–2. It did much to turn public opinion against slavery and was thus an important factor in stiffening the resolution of the Union side in the American Civil War. Today her portrayal of the slave characters is regarded as sentimental and patronising and, in the black community, ‘Uncle Tom’ is a gross insult. None the less, in its day, it was a highly influential and important book.

   A.C. Crozier, The Novels of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1969);

   J.D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (1994);

   M.I. Lowance Jr, E.E. Westbrook and R.C. de Prospo (eds), The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1994);

   F. Wilson, Crusader in Crinolines: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (1942).