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.
Black and white, head and shoulders photograph of Harriet Beecher Stowe. She is seated, wearing a dark dress with long, wide sleeves, buttons up the front, and a high, ruffled collar. She holds a pair of small spectacles in her hands and her fair, short, curly hair looks unbrushed.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Cultural formation Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Biographers have tended to adopt Robert Browning's scornful skepticism of the spiritualist movement, but it was not a fringe phenomenon. EBB was, historian Alex Owen argues, characteristic of those attracted to spiritualism by its deeply...
Cultural formation Sojourner Truth
Harriet Beecher Stowe called STevidently a full-blooded African. Stowe responded to this idea in part aesthetically, calling her a fine . . . specimen of the torrid zone, rather like a living, breathing impersonation...
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, 1857, 3 vols.
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...
Education Ketaki Kushari Dyson
As a child in a middle-class Bengali family, KKD was exposed from an early age to several languages, particularly Bengali, English, Sanskrit, German, and French. She learned English at home from her mother , who...
Education Emmeline Pankhurst
EP 's parents encouraged her intellectual development from an early age. Among the important first texts she read were Bunyan 's Pilgrim's Progress and John BunyanHoly War, and Carlyle 's French Revolution. Her mother...
Education Sarah Orne Jewett
She read extensively as a child, and came early to authors as diverse as Jane Austen , George Eliot , Margaret Oliphant , Henry Fielding , Laurence Sterne , Elizabeth Gaskell and Harriet Beecher Stowe
Education Margiad Evans
An important book in Peggy's early childhood was Tom Kitten by Beatrix Potter . The delicate little home pictures of that delicious masterpiece spoke to her as potential artist.
Evans, Margiad. A Ray of Darkness. Arthur Barker, 1952.
101
Later favourites included Harriet Beecher Stowe
Education Fanny Fern
As a child FF attended several schools, while her resistance to the piety and obedience expected of young ladies
Walker, Nancy A. Fanny Fern. Twayne, 1993.
7
apparently caused her father some concern. In the final years of her formal education she...
Education Dora Greenwell
Thereafter, she taught herself, studying philosophy, Latin, German, Italian, French, political economy, and theology.
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
199
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Dorling, William. Memoirs of Dora Greenwell. James Clarke, 1885.
73
She was very well read and took a particular interest in the writings of Caroline Norton , Felicia Hemans
Education Beatrix Potter
Beatrix, educated at home and six years older than her brother, was a solitary child. She had few toys; but she became deeply interested in science, and was also, from an early age, devoted to...
Education Helen Waddell
HW was, according to her editor Felicitas Corrigan , [s]teeped in the Bible by heredity and upbringing.
Waddell, Helen. “Acknowledgements; Note; Introduction”. Between Two Eternities, edited by Felicitas Corrigan, Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1993, pp. viii - ix, 1.
ix
Her feeling for religion was even stronger than her feeling for literature: when she first, at about...
Family and Intimate relationships Ann Bridge
Marie Louise (Day) Sanders , AB 's mother, was an American from New Orleans, Louisiana (where her English husband met her on a business trip). She died in 1922
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
Hoehn, Matthew, editor. Catholic Authors. St Mary’s Abbey, 1952.
Matthew, Henry Colin Gray et al., editors. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. http://www.oxforddnb.com/.
Brought up by her black Mammy...
Family and Intimate relationships Sarah Orne Jewett
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...
Family and Intimate relationships Charlotte Perkins Gilman
CPG 's father, Frederick Beecher Perkins , descended from the prominent Beecher family and counted abolitionist writer Harriet Beecher Stowe among his immediate forebears. Frederick's anxiety about his ability to live up to his family...

Timeline

May 1819, May 1820: These months were scheduled for the removal...

National or international item

May 1819, May 1820

These months were scheduled for the removal of thousands of subsistence farmers and their families from the Highland estates of Lord and Lady Stafford (later the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland ) in the Sutherland...

1852: In the wake of the success of Stowe's Uncle...

Writing climate item

1852

In the wake of the success of Stowe 's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Richard Hildreth 's retitled novel The White Slave; or, Memoirs of a Fugitive appeared in an English edition with illustrations by Charles Kean

Spring 1852: Samuel Orchart Beeton (later the husband...

Building item

Spring 1852

Samuel Orchart Beeton (later the husband of Isabella Mary Beeton) began publishing the Englishwoman's Domestic Magazine, which stimulated the spread of home dressmaking.
Palmer, Alan, and Veronica Palmer. The Chronology of British History. Century, 1992.
273
White, Cynthia L. Women’s Magazines 1693-1968. Michael Joseph, 1970.
44-6
Winship, Janice. Inside Women’s Magazines. Pandora, 1987.
13
Freeman, Sarah. Isabella and Sam: The Story of Mrs Beeton. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1977.
70-1, 75
Freeman, Sarah. Isabella and Sam: The Story of Mrs Beeton. Coward, McCann and Geoghegan, 1977.
75-9, 133

21 March 1853: The thirty-year-old Matthew Arnold addressed...

Writing climate item

21 March 1853

The thirty-year-old Matthew Arnold addressed to Arthur Hugh Clough a classically misogynist letter about women writers, their works and their looks.
Borne Back Daily. 2001, http://borneback.com/ .
21 March 2008

April 1853: Stage performer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield,...

Building item

April 1853

Stage performer Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield , an ex-slave from Mississippi and the first Black concert singer to win fame in both the US and Britian, arrived in Liverpool.
Sanjek, Russell. American Popular Music and its Business. Oxford University Press, 1988.
219

9 November 1857: The first issue appeared of the US magazine...

Writing climate item

9 November 1857

The first issue appeared of the US magazine Atlantic Monthly. It set out to provide articles of an abstract and permanent value, while not ignoring the healthy appetite of the mind for entertainment in...

1861: A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued...

Writing climate item

1861

A company in Salem, Massachusetts, issued what seems to be the earliest version of a game called Authors, whose object was to collect sets of cards bearing the names of writers and the...

1864: Famous Girls who have become Illustrious...

Writing climate item

1864

Famous Girls who have become Illustrious Women: Forming Models for Imitation by the Young Women of England, a very popular book of biographical sketches by John M. Darton , was published.
The Athenaeum Index of Reviews and Reviewers: 1830-1870. http://replay.web.archive.org/20070714065452/http://www.soi.city.ac.uk/~asp/v2/home.html.
Solo: Search Oxford University Libraries Online. 18 July 2011, http://solo.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do?vid=OXVU1&fromLogin=true&reset_config=true.

1868: Mary Abigail Dodge published Woman's Wrongs:...

Writing climate item

1868

Mary Abigail Dodge published Woman's Wrongs: A Counter-Irritant in Boston under the name of Mary Hamilton.
Hedrick, Joan. Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. Oxford University Press, 1994.
359
Library of Congress Online Catalog. http://catalog.loc.gov/.

Texts

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. John P. Jewett, 1853.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Agnes of Sorrento. Ticknor and Fields, 1862.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Dred. Phillips, Sampson, 1856, 2 vols.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna. “Introduction”. The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth, Dodd, 1845, p. v - vii.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Lady Byron Vindicated. Fields, Osgood, 1870.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Editor Fields, Annie, Houghton, Mifflin, 1898.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, and Charles Edward Stowe. Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Houghton Mifflin, 1889.
Balfour, Clara, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Morning Dew Drops; or, The Juvenile Abstainer. W. and F. G. Cash, 1853.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Oldtown Folks. Fields, Osgood, 1869.
Lemon, Mark et al. Slave Life; or, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Webster, 1852.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. Phillips, Sampson, 1854, 2 vols.
Crowe, Catherine, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Juvenile Uncle Tom’s Cabin. George Routledge, 1853.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The Minister’s Wooing. Derby and Jackson, 1859.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. The Pearl of Orr’s Island. Ticknor and Fields, 1862.
Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth. M. W. Dodd, 1844, 3 vols.
Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth. M. W. Dodd, 1845, 2 vols.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. National Era.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin. John P. Jewett, 1852.