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 5
... A vast number of Americans viewed all this as a matter of the gravest concern. Dr. Beecher's “great motive in going to Cincinnati,” his daughter Harriet would later flatly aver, “was to oppose the V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM 5 Calvin • 5.
... A vast number of Americans viewed all this as a matter of the gravest concern. Dr. Beecher's “great motive in going to Cincinnati,” his daughter Harriet would later flatly aver, “was to oppose the V3612p01.pmd 2/16/07, 3:22 PM 5 Calvin • 5.
Page 6
... matters detained him in Boston (Hanover Church had burned down, and a new church was being built on Bowdoin Street); but with his eldest daughter Catharine, then in her early thirties, he went west at last, for the first time, in April ...
... matters detained him in Boston (Hanover Church had burned down, and a new church was being built on Bowdoin Street); but with his eldest daughter Catharine, then in her early thirties, he went west at last, for the first time, in April ...
Page 7
... matter when traveling east to recruit Dr. Beecher; and “the good of the Church, the awakening of the East in behalf of the West,” Vail had insisted besides, “loudly demanded that one of their best generals should occupy the very seat of ...
... matter when traveling east to recruit Dr. Beecher; and “the good of the Church, the awakening of the East in behalf of the West,” Vail had insisted besides, “loudly demanded that one of their best generals should occupy the very seat of ...
Page 18
... matters of church policy: of the Church's strivings to gain political power, of Catholic parents refusing to send their children to public schools. To those and other such practices, President Beecher continued to regard it his duty to ...
... matters of church policy: of the Church's strivings to gain political power, of Catholic parents refusing to send their children to public schools. To those and other such practices, President Beecher continued to regard it his duty to ...
Page 20
... matters. She was away herself in the summer of 1834, having set off for a first visit back to New England since coming west two years earlier. She was twenty-three years old, traveling with her friend Mary Dutton by stage, steamboat ...
... matters. She was away herself in the summer of 1834, having set off for a first visit back to New England since coming west two years earlier. She was twenty-three years old, traveling with her friend Mary Dutton by stage, steamboat ...
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