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 67
Page 3
... brother George on the box shouting out the stories he got from the various drivers, and leading us all in singing ... brother's distributing his tracts along the highway, “peppering the land with moral influence”; and after they had ...
... brother George on the box shouting out the stories he got from the various drivers, and leading us all in singing ... brother's distributing his tracts along the highway, “peppering the land with moral influence”; and after they had ...
Page 8
... brother, with his large family, having torn themselves from the endearing scenes of their home,' etc., etc., 'were going, like Jacob,' etc.—a very scriptural and appropriate flourish,” Harriet adjudged the allusion, to a reverent Old ...
... brother, with his large family, having torn themselves from the endearing scenes of their home,' etc., etc., 'were going, like Jacob,' etc.—a very scriptural and appropriate flourish,” Harriet adjudged the allusion, to a reverent Old ...
Page 14
... brother Jamie “parading by the house with his arm over the neck of a great hog, apparently on the most amicable terms possible; and the other day he actually got upon the back of one, and rode some distance. So much for allowing these ...
... brother Jamie “parading by the house with his arm over the neck of a great hog, apparently on the most amicable terms possible; and the other day he actually got upon the back of one, and rode some distance. So much for allowing these ...
Page 15
... brother John. Members of the club included Judge James Hall, editor of the Western Monthly; Professor Hentz, the naturalist; his wife, the novelist Caroline Lee Hentz; Professor O. M. Mitchel, the astronomer; General Edward King—all ...
... brother John. Members of the club included Judge James Hall, editor of the Western Monthly; Professor Hentz, the naturalist; his wife, the novelist Caroline Lee Hentz; Professor O. M. Mitchel, the astronomer; General Edward King—all ...
Page 16
... brother of Harriet's own mother, Dr. Beecher's late first wife. What the younger Miss Beecher's effort would provide for the society's amusement was an imitation of the orotund prose of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-century ...
... brother of Harriet's own mother, Dr. Beecher's late first wife. What the younger Miss Beecher's effort would provide for the society's amusement was an imitation of the orotund prose of Dr. Samuel Johnson, the eighteenth-century ...
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