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
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Page 14
... dead, whole and divided into portions, their outsides and their insides, their grunts and their squeals, meet you at every moment.” Or as Mrs. Trollope put it (that “learned lady,” whom Americans, smarting V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM ...
... dead, whole and divided into portions, their outsides and their insides, their grunts and their squeals, meet you at every moment.” Or as Mrs. Trollope put it (that “learned lady,” whom Americans, smarting V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM ...
Page 44
... dead husband “with his hand in hers in heartless despair till she was at last forcibly carried into another room—The intelligence was immediately spread.” Lyman Beecher, the dead man's father, heard the dreadful news back east where he ...
... dead husband “with his hand in hers in heartless despair till she was at last forcibly carried into another room—The intelligence was immediately spread.” Lyman Beecher, the dead man's father, heard the dreadful news back east where he ...
Page 45
... dead brother and of her lifelong friend in Hartford; and after this fifth child's arrival the mother's indisposition proved especially severe: “my babe was eight weeks old this Tuesday & yet I am far from being fully restored.” A wet ...
... dead brother and of her lifelong friend in Hartford; and after this fifth child's arrival the mother's indisposition proved especially severe: “my babe was eight weeks old this Tuesday & yet I am far from being fully restored.” A wet ...
Page 53
... dead Charley's bedside—would arise directly Harriet Beecher Stowe's forthcoming astounding globewide public triumph. 6 CALL TO BOWDOIN C alvin Stowe returned from Brattleboro V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM 53 Calvin • 53.
... dead Charley's bedside—would arise directly Harriet Beecher Stowe's forthcoming astounding globewide public triumph. 6 CALL TO BOWDOIN C alvin Stowe returned from Brattleboro V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM 53 Calvin • 53.
Page 61
... dead Charley's clothes “without feeling it thro my very heart.” The school year at Lane having ended, Calvin with the two other Stowe children arrived in Brunswick shortly before the birth of this latest baby. Sister Catharine came down ...
... dead Charley's clothes “without feeling it thro my very heart.” The school year at Lane having ended, Calvin with the two other Stowe children arrived in Brunswick shortly before the birth of this latest baby. Sister Catharine came down ...
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 |
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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