Loves of Harriet Beecher StoweThe author of Hawthorne in Concord “brings [Stowe] to life in all her glory, in a book at once so dramatic and so subtle that it rivals the best fiction” (Debby Applegate, author of The Most Famous Man in America). Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin forced an ambivalent North to confront the atrocities of slavery, yet it was just one of many accomplishments of the Beechers, the most eminent American family of the nineteenth century. Historian Philip McFarland follows the Beecher clan to the boomtown of Cincinnati, where Harriet’s glimpses of slavery across the Kentucky border moved her to pen Uncle Tom’s Cabin. We meet Harriet’s loves: her father Lyman, her husband Calvin, and her brother Henry, the most famous preacher of his time. As McFarland leads us through Harriet’s ever-changing world, he traces the arc of her literary career from her hard-scrabble beginnings to her ascendancy as the most renowned author of her day. Through the portrait of a defining American family, Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe opens into an unforgettable rendering of mid-nineteenth century America in the midst of unprecedented social and demographic explosions. To this day, Uncle Tom’s Cabin reverberates as a crucial document in Western culture. “Often dismissed even by her admirers as a pious faculty wife who just happened to write the book of the century, Harriet Beecher Stowe emerges in Philip McFarland’s biography in all her complexity and genius.” —Charles Calhoun, author of Longfellow: A Rediscovered Life and The Gilded Age |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 59
Page 5
... appeared to threaten all that vast region; the Mississippi Valley must be saved for the old faith, for Beecher's brand of Protestantism. Cincinnati, for instance, founded along the Ohio River in 1788, had already become home to a ...
... appeared to threaten all that vast region; the Mississippi Valley must be saved for the old faith, for Beecher's brand of Protestantism. Cincinnati, for instance, founded along the Ohio River in 1788, had already become home to a ...
Page 9
... such. To Georgiana, Harriet wrote candidly, in the spring of 1833, of ill health and low spirits since coming to Cincinnati. Her new surroundings appeared somehow less substantial than the old. V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM 9 Calvin • 9.
... such. To Georgiana, Harriet wrote candidly, in the spring of 1833, of ill health and low spirits since coming to Cincinnati. Her new surroundings appeared somehow less substantial than the old. V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM 9 Calvin • 9.
Page 10
Philip McFarland. Her new surroundings appeared somehow less substantial than the old. “About half of my time I am scarcely alive, and a great part of the rest the slave and sport of morbid feeling and unreasonable prejudice.” But why ...
Philip McFarland. Her new surroundings appeared somehow less substantial than the old. “About half of my time I am scarcely alive, and a great part of the rest the slave and sport of morbid feeling and unreasonable prejudice.” But why ...
Page 11
... appeared to live much of the time in an inner world of her own, in her corner observing. She was bright, as were the Beechers generally; so that during the fall of 1824, her oldest sister having set up a school twenty-five miles from ...
... appeared to live much of the time in an inner world of her own, in her corner observing. She was bright, as were the Beechers generally; so that during the fall of 1824, her oldest sister having set up a school twenty-five miles from ...
Page 12
... appeared attractive in many respects, along the sparkling Ohio River in the sixth largest city in America, situated on its plain and highlands that had been forest and canebrake a mere forty years before. During her earlier exploratory ...
... appeared attractive in many respects, along the sparkling Ohio River in the sixth largest city in America, situated on its plain and highlands that had been forest and canebrake a mere forty years before. During her earlier exploratory ...
Contents
3 | |
11 | |
23 | |
32 | |
43 | |
54 | |
63 | |
Uncle Toms Cabin | 74 |
Civil War | 157 |
Postbellum | 167 |
A Vindication | 177 |
Aftermath | 187 |
henry | 195 |
The Beechers | 197 |
Religion | 206 |
Brooklyn | 215 |
Reception | 83 |
Dark Places | 91 |
lyman | 99 |
To England | 101 |
Culture | 112 |
Looking Back | 121 |
Return to Europe | 131 |
Heartbreak | 140 |
The Ministers Wooing | 149 |
Changing America | 225 |
My Wife and I | 235 |
Scandal | 245 |
Inside the Home | 254 |
Trial | 263 |
Late Years | 274 |
notes | 293 |
works cited | 315 |
Other editions - View all
Common terms and phrases
abolitionist American Andover appeared Autobiography of Lyman Boston Brooklyn brother Brunswick C. E. Stowe Calvin Stowe Calvinist Catharine Catharine Beecher century Charles Charley child Cincinnati congregation daughter dead dear death decade Dred earlier early east editor Edward England Essays family’s father feel felt Fred George Georgiana God’s Harriet Beecher Stowe Hartford Hatty heart Hedrick Henry Ward Beecher Henry’s husband Ibid Lady Byron Lady Byron Vindicated Lane Seminary Lane Theological Seminary later letter Litchfield living Lord Byron Lyman Beecher meanwhile minister Minister’s months mother never novel Ohio Plymouth Church poet poet’s Professor Stowe quoted readers Reverend sermons slave slavery South southern spirit story Stowe’s Theodore Tilton thing Tilton tion Uncle Tom’s Cabin Victoria Woodhull Walnut Hills wife wife’s woman women writing wrote York young