HARRIET BEECHER-STOWE (1811-1896)

The famous American novelist Harriet Elizabeth Beecher-Stowe was born at Litchfield in the State of Connecticut where her father, Dr. Lyman Beecher, was a pastor. She was brought up in the religious earnestness which the New Englanders had inherited from the Puritans. To their understanding justice and kindness could not exist outside religion, and this is felt in the works of the writer.
Harriet was four years old when her mother died. The chief influence of Harriet's youth was her elder sister, Catharine, who had started a school. Both sisters took to teaching. In 1832 the entire family moved to Cincinnati where Dr. Beecher accepted the presidency of a Theological Seminary. It was there that Harriet discovered her gift for writing when a local magazine gave her a prize for one of her short stories. In 1836 she married Professor Calvin Stowe, a friend of her father's, who taught in the Seminary. Mrs. Stowe, having a family of several children, had little time to write. Early sketches written in her spare time were stories about local characters, the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers. They were published in 1843 under the title of "The May flower". These sketches show the writer's deep interest in social welfare.
Cincinnati was near the border of Virginia —the oldest slave state. It was there that Beecher-Stowe saw the institution of slavery; there she lived through the experiences which compelled her to write on slavery. She remembered how her husband and brother had saved a free Negro girl, who was being pursued by her former master, by hiding the girl in their home. And nearby, in the City of Cincinnati, a pro-slavery mob burned the print-shop where the abolitionists published literature urging emancipation of the Negroes. The editor, a friend of the Beechers, Lovejoy, was murdered by that mob.
In 1850 Professor Stowe was invited to teach at a college in the State of Maine. The family moved again to New England. The passage of the Fugitive Slave Act in 1850 roused general indignation in the Northern states. It inspired Beecher-Stowe to write a larger work. Early in 1851 she began the novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin". When it appeared, the book had an enormous and continuous success. Three hundred thousand copies were sold within a year.
Naturally, from that time on she devoted herself to the cause of emancipation of Negro slaves. Many thought that the book had helped to bring on the Civil War. Twice she went abroad: she was heartily welcomed in England and Scotland.
Her second novel was "Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp" (1856). In this book the author again depicts the viciousness of slavery, but this time she shows the growing revolutionary spirit among Negro slaves.