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 28
Page 17
... moved into the spacious brick building set among acacias, rose bushes, and honeysuckle atop elevated Walnut Hills at the edge of the forest, the most comfortable home that any of them had ever known. Dr. Beecher for his part was ...
... moved into the spacious brick building set among acacias, rose bushes, and honeysuckle atop elevated Walnut Hills at the edge of the forest, the most comfortable home that any of them had ever known. Dr. Beecher for his part was ...
Page 20
... moved up to formerly salubrious Walnut Hills, where thirty students of Lane Theological Seminary fell ill, eight severely so. Another sufferer was “our dear Mrs. Stowe,” Professor Stowe's wife, Harriet's new friend. Twenty-five years ...
... moved up to formerly salubrious Walnut Hills, where thirty students of Lane Theological Seminary fell ill, eight severely so. Another sufferer was “our dear Mrs. Stowe,” Professor Stowe's wife, Harriet's new friend. Twenty-five years ...
Page 26
... moved to the second dwelling, a one-story house where the child's new bedroom was off the kitchen. The room was unfinished, its wall boards in some places not reaching the ceiling. One opening between ceiling and wall was directly in ...
... moved to the second dwelling, a one-story house where the child's new bedroom was off the kitchen. The room was unfinished, its wall boards in some places not reaching the ceiling. One opening between ceiling and wall was directly in ...
Page 39
... moved to rally indignantly and give their support to mobs that, in one instance, howled threat-filled protests outside the office of an antislavery newspaper editor setting up his print shop in Cincinnati. That particular mob ended by ...
... moved to rally indignantly and give their support to mobs that, in one instance, howled threat-filled protests outside the office of an antislavery newspaper editor setting up his print shop in Cincinnati. That particular mob ended by ...
Page 43
... moved with his wife Sarah Buckingham to a church in Rochester, and later still to Chillicothe, in southern Ohio. The young minister—he was born in 1809, two years before Harriet—was at Chillicothe, engaged in his pastoral duties ...
... moved with his wife Sarah Buckingham to a church in Rochester, and later still to Chillicothe, in southern Ohio. The young minister—he was born in 1809, two years before Harriet—was at Chillicothe, engaged in his pastoral duties ...
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