STOWE, HARRIET ELIZA BETH ( BEECH ER) ( 1S11-96). A famous American novelist, born in Litchfield, Conn. She was the daughter of the Rev. Lyman Beecher, and sister of Henry Ward Beecher. She attended school at Litchfield Acad emy and later at Hartford. In 1832 her father was called to the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio. While living in that city she gained a personal acquaintance with the ways of slavery, especially in regard to the handling of fugitive slaves and the attitude of the South toward the abolitionists. The impres sion was strengthened by several journeys into some of the slave States with her husband, the Rev. Calvin E. Stowe, a strong anti-slavery man, whom she married in 1836. In 1843 Mrs. Stowe published her first book, entitled The Mayflower, or Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims. In 1850 her husband was called to Bowdoin College, Brims wick, Maine, and in the interval before his trans fer to the chair of sacred literature at Andover (Mass.) Theological Seminary, two years later, she wrote the book by which she is most widely known, Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life Among the Lowly. The novel appeared in the N'ational Era of Washington, D. C., between June, 1851, and April, 1852, in which latter year it was issued in book form in Boston. As a serial it attracted no unusual notice, but as a book its success, after a few weeks, was unprecedented. Five hun dred thousand copies were sold in the United States in five years, and many more in England, and it has been translated into at least nineteen foreign languages. In the following year Mrs. Stowe, in reply to various inquiries. criticisms, and censures, published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. She also wrote, in the same year, A Peep into Uncle Tom's Cabin, for Children.
The health of Mrs. Stowe was impaired by the excitement of her work, and in 1853 she went to Europe. on her return she published (1854) Runny Memories of Foreirn Lands. two volumes relating her travels. She then returned to the attack against slavery in Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856; at one time entitled :Vino Gordon), but without the unction and suc cess of her former work. Thenceforth her writ
ing consisted chiefly of novels of quiet New Eng land life, with which she was familiar, and ex cept for her polemic book, Lady Byron cotcd: A History of the Byron Controversy (1869), and her article in Macaollan's Maga zine which had occasioned that discussion, her works were comparatively free from the didactic spirit. The chief titles are: The Minister's Wooing (1859) ; The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862); Agnes of Sorrento (1862); Religious Poems (1867) ; Folks (1369) ; Pink mid it Tyranny (1871) ; Sate La wson's Fireside Stories ( 187 1 ) ; My Wife and I (1871) ; Pal metto Leaves (1873) ; We and Our Neighbors (1875) ; and Poyanuc People (1878). Of these, the best are The Minister's Wooing and °Tilton.% Folks, which were greatly praised by such critics as Lowell. She removed from Andover to Id art ford in I86-1, and in 1868 became associated with 1). C. Mitchell in the editorship of Hearth and Home.
Mrs. Stowe is remembered chiefly as the author of probably the most potent and widely read novel in modern literature. Though, like almost all her novels, loose and rambling in structure, Uncle Tote's Cabin has abundant vitality, and is the work of a genuine story-teller. It also has the unusual fortune of being at once a cause and an outcome of a heated national struggle; no novel was ever better timed for an occasion, and few have aroused so much admiration and dislike. Soon after its publication the book was dramatized, and probably no other play has been produced so many times or seen by so many people. Both in its original and in its numerous stage versions it still holds popular favor in spite of occasional protests. The char acter Uncle Tons was drawn from the life of Josiah Henson (q.v.).
Consult: the Life by Charles E. Stowe (Bos ton, 1889) ; • and Life and Letters, by Mrs. Annie Fields (Boston, 1899).