Read complete books and articles on: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Stowe, Harriet Beecher - 1811–96, American novelist and humanitarian, b. Litchfield, Conn. With her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, she stirred the conscience of Americans concerning slavery and thereby influenced the course of American history. The daughter of Lyman Beecher, pastor of the Congregational Church in Litchfield, and the sister of Henry Ward Beecher, Harriet grew up in an atmosphere of New England Congregational piety and, like all the Beechers, early developed an interest in theology and in schemes for improving humanity. In 1824 she went to Hartford, at first to study, later to teach in her sister Catherine's school. When her father became head of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, she moved to that city with him and there began teaching again and writing. In 1836 she married Professor Calvin Ellis Stowe.

Cincinnati, a border city, was at the time torn with abolitionist conflicts. Harriet's brothers were violently opposed to slavery, and she had seen its effects in Kentucky and had aided a runaway slave. However, it was not until the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act (1850) that she was moved to write on the subject. Uncle Tom's Cabin, first published serially (1851–52) in an abolitionist paper, the National Era, was not intended as abolitionist propaganda, nor was it directed against the South, although slaveholders condemned the book as unfair; indeed, it presented some of the favorable aspects of slavery, but it also crystallized the sentiments of the North. In one year over 300,000 copies were sold, and its dramatization by G. L. Aiken had a long run. The book was translated into many foreign languages, and when Mrs. Stowe visited Europe in 1853 numerous honors were bestowed on her.

Her second novel of slavery, Dred (1856), while better constructed and more accurate, failed to recapture the warm characterization of the first. During the 1850s she worked vigorously for the antislavery effort, although she never allied herself with the abolitionists, whom she considered extremists. The mother of six children, she was constantly harassed by financial worries, for despite the great popularity of her books her earnings were never large, and she and her husband were unbusinesslike and overly generous. Interested in other reform movements, such as temperance and woman suffrage, she also wrote religious poems and articles for religious magazines and housekeeping manuals. Her works are generally given to sermonizing, but in The Minister's Wooing (1859) and Old Town Folks (1869) she captures the New England of her childhood.

At her best, Stowe combined literary realism with evangelical fervor. A prolific writer whose works fill 16 volumes, she was chiefly popular because she so aptly expressed the sentiments of the 19th-century middle class. Her works reflect the great issues and events of her century: slavery, women's position in society, the decline of Calvinism, the rise of industry and consumerism, and the birth of a great national literature.

See her life and letters, ed. by A. Fields (1897, repr. 1970); biographies by her son C. E. Stowe (1889, repr. 1967), R. F. Wilson (1941, repr. 1970), and J. D. Hedrick (1994); studies by J. R. Adams (1963, rev. ed. 1989) and M. Reynolds (1985).

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16 of the Best Books and Articles on: Harriet Beecher Stowe

as selected by Questia librarians

1.

Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life » Read Now
by Charles Stowe. 316 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...HARRIET BEECHER STOWE THE STORY OF HER LIFE HARRIET BEECHER STOWE THE STORY OF HER LIFE BY HER...RESERVED PREFACE THIS life of Harriet Beecher Stowe is not a biography in...
2.

Uncle Tom's Cabin » Read Now
by Harriet Beecher Stowe. 529 pgs.

Collections: History, Literature, Entire Library
3.

Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp » Read Now
by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Judie Newman. 754 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

...Great Dismal Swamp BY Harriet Beecher Stowe AUTHOR OF "UNCLE TOMS CABIN...Abraham Lincoln hailed Harriet Beecher Stowe as "the little lady who made...Great Dismal Swamp BY...
4.

The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader » Read Now
by Joan D. Hedrick. 560 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

A balanced collection of Stowe's most important writings from the 1830s through to the 1860s, including the complete Uncle Tom's Cabin. The reader is divided into three sections: Early Essays and Sketches; Anti-Slavery Writings; Domestic Culture and Politics. The editor has included an introductory...
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A balanced collection of Stowe's most important writings from the 1830s through to the 1860s, including the complete Uncle Tom's Cabin. The reader is divided into three sections: Early Essays and Sketches; Anti-Slavery Writings; Domestic Culture and Politics. The editor has included an introductory essay that appraises Harriet Beecher Stowe's impact on 19th century American literature, politics, and culture.
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5.

Narrative in the Professional Age: Transatlantic Readings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, George Eliot, and Elizabeth Stuart Phelps » Read Now
by Jennifer Cognard-Black. 214 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Challenging previous studies that claim anxiety and antagonism between transatlantic Victorian authors, Jennifer Cognard-Black uncovers a model of reciprocal influence among three of the most popular women writers of the era. Combining analyses of personal correspondence and print culture with close...
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Challenging previous studies that claim anxiety and antagonism between transatlantic Victorian authors, Jennifer Cognard-Black uncovers a model of reciprocal influence among three of the most popular women writers of the era. Combining analyses of personal correspondence and print culture with close readings of key narratives, this study presents an original history of transatlantic authorship that examines how these writers invented a collaborative aesthetics both within and against the dominant discourse of professionalism.
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6.

The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women's Rights and Woman's Sphere » Read Now
by Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley, Anne Margolis. 369 pgs.

Collections: History, Entire Library

...Catharine Esther, 1800-1878. 4. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. 5. Hooker...149 Harriet Beecher Stowe and Calvin Stowe in the early 1850s / 150 Harriet Beecher Stowe...
7.

The Character of God: Recovering the Lost Literary Power of American Protestantism (Chap. Four "Sympathy and Alienation: Henry Ward Beecher and Harriet Beecher Stowe") » Read Now
by Thomas E. Jenkins. 280 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God, author Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring by the late nineteenth century...
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Educated people have become bereft of sophisticated ways to develop their religious inclinations. A major reason for this is that theology has become vague and dull. In The Character of God, author Thomas E. Jenkins maintains that Protestant theology became boring by the late nineteenth century because the depictions of God as a character in theology became boring. He shows how in the early nineteenth century, American Protestant theologians downplayed biblical depictions of God's emotional complexity and refashioned his character according to their own notions, stressing emotional singularity. These notions came from many sources, but the major influences were the neoclassical and sentimental literary styles of characterization dominant at the time. The serene benevolence of neoclassicism and the tender sympathy of sentimentalism may have made God appealing in the mid-1800s, but by the end of the century, these styles had lost much of their cultural power and increasingly came to seem flat and vague. Despite this, both liberal and conservative theologians clung to these characterizations of God throughout the twentieth century. Jenkins argues that a way out of this impasse can be found in romanticism, the literary style of characterization that supplanted neoclassicism and sentimentalism and dominated American literary culture throughout the twentieth century. Romanticism emphasized emotional complexity and resonated with biblical depictions of God. A few maverick religious writers-- such as Harriet Beecher Stowe, W. G. T. Shedd, and Horace Bushnell--did devise emotionally complex characterizations of God and in some cases drew directly from romanticism. But their strange and sometimes shocking depictions of God were largely forgotten in the twentieth century. s use "theological" as a pejorative term, implying that an argument is needlessly Jenkins urges a reassessment of their work and a greaterin understanding of the relationship between theology and literature. Recovering the lost literary power of American Protestantism, he claims, will make the character of God more compelling and help modern readers appreciate the peculiar power of the biblical characterization of God.
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8.

Identifying the Image of God: Radical Christians and Nonviolent Power in the Antebellum United States (Chap. 6 "Epics of Ambivalence: Nonviolent Power in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Antislavery Novels") » Read Now
by Dan McKanan. 294 pgs.

Collections: Religious Studies, Entire Library

Between 1820 and 1860, American social reformers invited all people to identify God's image in the victims of war, slavery, and addiction. Identifying the Image of God traces the theme of identification--and its liberal Christian roots--through the literature of social reform, focusing on...
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Between 1820 and 1860, American social reformers invited all people to identify God's image in the victims of war, slavery, and addiction. Identifying the Image of God traces the theme of identification--and its liberal Christian roots--through the literature of social reform, focusing on sentimental novels, temperance tales, and slave narratives, and invites contemporary activists to revive the "politics of identification."
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9.

Sentimental Materialism: Gender, Commodity Culture, and Nineteenth-Century American Literature (Chap. 3 "Sentimental Consumption: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and the Aesthetics of Middle-Class Ownership") » Read Now
by Lori Merish. 390 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

In Sentimental Materialism Lori Merish considers the intricate relationship between consumption and womanhood in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Taking as her starting point a diversity of cultural art facts -- from domestic fiction and philosophical treatises to advice literature and...
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In Sentimental Materialism Lori Merish considers the intricate relationship between consumption and womanhood in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Taking as her starting point a diversity of cultural art facts -- from domestic fiction and philosophical treatises to advice literature and cigars -- Merish explores the symbolic functions they served and finds that consumption evolved into a form of personal expressiveness that indicated not only a woman's wealth and taste but also her race, class, morality, and civic values. The discursive production of this new subjectivity -- the feminine consumer -- was remarkably influential, helping to shape American capitalism, culture, and nation building.
The phenomenon of female consumption was capitalism's complement to male production: It created what Merish calls the "Other Protestant Ethic", a feminine and sentimental counter-part to Max Weber's ethic of hard work, economic rationality, and self-control. In addition, driven by the culture's effort to,civilize the "cannibalistic" practices of ethnic, class, and national otherness, appropriate female consumerism, marked by taste and refinement, identified certain women and their families as proper citizens of the United States. The public nature of consumption, however, had curiously conflicting effects: While the achievement of cultured material circumstances facilitated women's civic agency, it also reinforced stereotypes of domestic womanhood.
Merish's inquiry into middle-class consumption and accompanying ideals of womanhood will appeal to readers in a variety of disciplines, including American studies, cultural studies, feminist theory, and cultural history.
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10.

Home Fronts: Domesticity and Its Critics in the Antebellum United States (Chap. 4 "Bio-Political Resistance: Harriet Beecher Stowe") » Read Now
by Lora Romero. 150 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
11.

Race, Citizenship and Law in American Literature (Chap. 2 "The Look of Higher Law: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Antislavery Fiction") » Read Now
by Gregg D. Crane. 299 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Gregg Crane examines the interaction between civic identity and race and justice within American law and literature in this study. He recounts the efforts of literary and legal figures to bring the nation's law in accord with the moral consensus that slavery and racial oppression are evil. Covering...
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Gregg Crane examines the interaction between civic identity and race and justice within American law and literature in this study. He recounts the efforts of literary and legal figures to bring the nation's law in accord with the moral consensus that slavery and racial oppression are evil. Covering such writers as Harriet Beecher Stowe and Frederick Douglass, and a range of novelists, poets, philosophers, politicians, lawyers and judges, this original book will revise the relationship between race and nationalism in American literature.
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12.

Divided Houses: Gender and the Civil War (Chap. 15 "Writing out the War: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Averted Gaze") » Read Now
by Catherine Clinton, Nina Silber. 426 pgs.

Collections: Entire Library
13.

Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chap. 4 "The Impact of Domestic Feminism: Harriet Beecher Stowe's Mature Career") » Read Now
by Susan Coultrap-McQuin. 253 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
14.

The Power of the Story: Fiction and Political Change (Chap. 3 "Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tome's Cabin (1852)") » Read Now
by Michael Hanne. 262 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library
15.

The "Tragic Mulatta" Revisited: Race and Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Antislavery Fiction (Chap. 3 "Resistant Cassys in Richard Hildreth's The Slave and Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin") » Read Now
by Eva Allegra Raimon. 202 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library

Since its inception, the United States has been intensely preoccupied with interracialism. The concept is embedded everywhere in our social and political fabric, including our sense of national identity. And yet, in both its quantitative and symbolic forms, interracialism remains an extremely...
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Since its inception, the United States has been intensely preoccupied with interracialism. The concept is embedded everywhere in our social and political fabric, including our sense of national identity. And yet, in both its quantitative and symbolic forms, interracialism remains an extremely elusive phenomenon, causing policy makers and census boards to wrangle over how to delineate it and, on an emblematic level, stirring intense emotions from fear to fascination. In The "Tragic Mulatta" Revisited, Eve Allegra Raimon focuses on the mixed-race female slave in literature, arguing that this figure became a symbolic vehicle for explorations of race and nation-both of which were in crisis in the mid-nineteenth century. At this time, judicial, statutory, social, and scientific debates about the meaning of racial difference (and intermixture) coincided with disputes over frontier expansion, which were never merely about land acquisition but also literally about the "complexion" of that frontier. Embodying both northern and southern ideologies, the "amalgamated" mulatta, the author argues, can be viewed as quintessentially American, a precursor to contemporary motifs of "hybrid" and "mestizo" identities. Where others have focused on the gendered and racially abject position of the "tragic mulatta," Raimon reconsiders texts by such central antislavery writers as Lydia Maria Child, William Wells Brown, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Harriet Wilson to suggest that the figure is more usefully examined as a way of understanding the volatile and shifting interface of race and national identity in the antebellum period.
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16.

Criticism and the Color Line: Desegregating American Literary Studies ("The African-American Presence in Stowe's Dred" begins on p. 171) » Read Now
by Henry B. Wonham. 300 pgs.

Collections: Literature, Entire Library