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 15
... fact, the town's intellectual life, of New England origins, was already remarkably ample, having preceded the boom in hogs; and to this cultural Cincinnati the privileged children of Reverend Lyman Beecher, president of Lane Theological ...
... fact, the town's intellectual life, of New England origins, was already remarkably ample, having preceded the boom in hogs; and to this cultural Cincinnati the privileged children of Reverend Lyman Beecher, president of Lane Theological ...
Page 19
... fact to establish an antislavery society at once and to push for the immediate abolition of slavery, while pledging themselves to found schools for blacks and lecture far and wide on slavery's evils. Trustees of Lane were profoundly ...
... fact to establish an antislavery society at once and to push for the immediate abolition of slavery, while pledging themselves to found schools for blacks and lecture far and wide on slavery's evils. Trustees of Lane were profoundly ...
Page 23
... fact is I cannot live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so ...
... fact is I cannot live without you, and if we were not so prodigious poor I would come for you at once. There is no woman like you in this wide world. Who else has so much talent with so little self-conceit; so much reputation with so ...
Page 32
... fact, even a genius. An admiring sister-in-law put it plainly, without irony, regarding Harriet's having given birth to twins: “you are a genius, and therefore can't be expected to walk in a beaten track.” Or as Catharine a little later ...
... fact, even a genius. An admiring sister-in-law put it plainly, without irony, regarding Harriet's having given birth to twins: “you are a genius, and therefore can't be expected to walk in a beaten track.” Or as Catharine a little later ...
Page 45
... fact, writing to his wife in Cincinnati of doing nothing but lolling in bed or reading the newspaper or straggling over fields; he had lost his voice, was “very nervous, my throat is sore, my lungs are weak, my stomach is exceedingly ...
... fact, writing to his wife in Cincinnati of doing nothing but lolling in bed or reading the newspaper or straggling over fields; he had lost his voice, was “very nervous, my throat is sore, my lungs are weak, my stomach is exceedingly ...
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