Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Harriet Beecher Stowe
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Standard Name: Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Birth Name: Harriet Elizabeth Beecher
Married Name: Harriet Elizabeth Stowe
HBS
is best known for the highly sentimental and influential anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, although she also authored several other novels, short stories, children's stories, pamphlets, a good deal of journalism, and a biography of Lady Byron
(mother of the mathematician and scientist Ada Byron, Lady Lovelace
). Much of her journalism was evangelical in tone. HBS
's reputation peaked with Uncle Tom's Cabin, after which her cultural standing declined.
The title-page bore a creative misquotation from William Wordsworth
: She lived within her father's halls . . . And very few to love—which converts the rustic Lucy into an upper-class heroine like AM
Publishing
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington
It is a point of debate among scholars whether Blessington saw and used the memoirs of himself which Byron
wrote but later burned.
Marguerite Gardiner, Countess of Blessington,. “Introduction”. Conversations of Lord Byron, edited by Ernest J. Lovell, Princeton University Press, pp. 3-114.
7
Later editions include those of 1893 and 1969 (the former mangles...
Friends, Associates
Anna Leonowens
While she held her teaching position, AL
made friends with many of the women living at Nang Harm, the imperial harem. One pupil, Lady Son Klin, worked daily in Anna's classroom on a translation...
Friends, Associates
Anna Leonowens
In 1872 AL
met John Paine
, a wealthy older man with an interest in literature and a fan of her writing. Through Paine she was introduced to the elite of the New York arts...
Reception
Anna Leonowens
While initial reviews, particularly in the English Athenæum, of The English Governess and its successor, The Romance of Siamese Harem Life, were somewhat skeptical of the author's veracity, the books were very successful...
Intertextuality and Influence
Anna Leonowens
The stories detail the lives and romances of women living in Siam's royal harem. Like her first book, this one is informed by the generic expectations of a northern United States audience recently triumphant...
Dedications
Fanny Aikin Kortright
FAK
published the governess novel Anne Sherwood: or, The Social Institutions of England. She signed her dedication to Harriet Beecher Stowe
with the pseudonym Berkeley-Aikin.
Athenæum. J. Lection.
1550 (1857): 881
Kortright, Fanny Aikin. Anne Sherwood. Richard Bentley.
1: prelims
Dedications
Fanny Aikin Kortright
She says that, not being personally known to Beecher Stowe, she has not asked leave for her dedication, but that Stowe
's work for the black slaves suggests she would favour a work written to...
Textual Production
Fanny Kemble
The British edition appeared in May, and the American edition in June.
Clinton, Catherine. Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars. Simon and Schuster.
178-9
FK
related the stories of slave women, and asked in conclusion: Can you conceive a more wretched picture than that which it...
Fields and Jewett had many nicknames for each other: SOJ
was sometimes Pinny Lawson, or P. L., an amalgam of her family nickname and the surname of the village storyteller Sam Lawson in...
Friends, Associates
Sarah Orne Jewett
SOJ
had a broad social circle. She belonged to an artistic community of women that included Celia Thaxter
and Louise Guiney
, and counted Harriet Beecher Stowe
(whose funeral she and Annie Fields
attended in...
Friends, Associates
Harriet Jacobs
HJ
's friendships with white people have left traces behind them; her friendships with black people have not. When she arrived in Rochester in 1849, HJ
stayed briefly with Amy Post
, a white Quaker...
Textual Production
Harriet Jacobs
Her first thought was to have Harriet Beecher Stowe
approached to tell it, but all Stowe could envisage was using some facts about HJ
(after checking them with white witnesses) in her A Key to...