Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Harriet Beecher Stowe
-
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.
She tells her own story briskly and dryly, with more humour than sentiment. This style comes into its own when relating the horrifying events on the home front during World War One. She concludes the...
Literary responses
Annie Tinsley
The story was thought, however, to derive from other books, both from Harriet Beecher Stowe
's Uncle Tom's Cabin and from Charlotte Brontë
's Villette. In an Advertisement to her next, anonymous novel, AT
Publishing
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
CET
's The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth, featuring an introduction by Harriet Beecher Stowe
, was published in New York in three volumes.
Tonna, Charlotte Elizabeth, and Harriet Beecher Stowe. The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth. M. W. Dodd, 1844, 3 vols.
prelims
Textual Features
Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna
Stowe
's introduction praises CET
's works as a safe and desirable acquisition in every christian [sic] and family library in our country.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher, and Charlotte Elizabeth Tonna. “Introduction”. The Works of Charlotte Elizabeth, Dodd, 1845, p. v - vii.
vii
She compares CET
's descriptions of factory life to those of...
Textual Production
Frances Trollope
FT
drew on her American experiences to produce the anti-slaverynovelThe Life and Adventures of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw, fifteen years before Stowe
's Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Stephen, Sir Leslie, and Sidney Lee, editors. The Dictionary of National Biography. Smith, Elder, 1908–2025, 22 vols. plus supplements.
Ellis, Linda Abess. Frances Trollope’s America. Peter Lang, 1993.
139
Literary responses
Sojourner Truth
Harriet Beecher Stowe
published a tribute to ST
, Sojourner Truth, the Libyan Sibyl, in the Atlantic Monthly. This materially increased Truth's fame, while constructing her in a way she was not entirely happy with.
Gates, Henry Louis, Jr, and Nellie Y. McKay, editors. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Norton, 1997.
197, 199
“Dictionary of Literary Biography online”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Center-LRC.
239
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...
Friends, Associates
Sojourner Truth
ST
's vocation brought her into contact with many eminent people, from Abraham Lincoln
downwards. She shared a platform with Frederick Douglass
on a famous occasion when she challenged his faith by demanding whether God...
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...
Textual Production
Emma Jane Worboise
An article by EJW
published in the magazine in 1882 suggests that she received approximately 500 contributions a week.
Melnyk, Julie. “Emma Jane Worboise and The Christian World Magazine: Christian Publishing and Womens Empowerment”. Victorian Periodicals Review, Vol.
The Christian World Magazine featured women in positions of authority in a wide cross-section of nationalities, time periods, and religious denominations. For example Harriet Beecher Stowe
's series of articles ironically titled Portraits of the...
Intertextuality and Influence
Emma Jane Worboise
Each chapter begins with a religious epigraph. This novel recounts the story of the attractive nineteen-year-old bride, Lilian Grey, who makes a marriage above her social class with the aristocratic Basil Hope.
Worboise, Emma Jane. The Wife’s Trials; Married Life; Husbands and Wives. Garland, 1976.
