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 73
Page 4
... never saw,” she went on, “such a field of usefulness and influence as is offered to him here.” All his adult life Catharine's father had made himself useful, first as the minister in a remote Long Island village during ten years at the ...
... never saw,” she went on, “such a field of usefulness and influence as is offered to him here.” All his adult life Catharine's father had made himself useful, first as the minister in a remote Long Island village during ten years at the ...
Page 6
... never saw a place so capable of being rendered a paradise by the improvements of taste as the environs of this city,” Catharine wrote after visiting Walnut Hills, site of the struggling school—“so elevated and cool,” she jested, “that ...
... never saw a place so capable of being rendered a paradise by the improvements of taste as the environs of this city,” Catharine wrote after visiting Walnut Hills, site of the struggling school—“so elevated and cool,” she jested, “that ...
Page 9
... never saw the truth so plain in their lives.” In that fruitful manner these Beechers concluded their ebullient journey westward, from Granville over corduroy roads to Columbus and on from there finally to Cincinnati, which they reached ...
... never saw the truth so plain in their lives.” In that fruitful manner these Beechers concluded their ebullient journey westward, from Granville over corduroy roads to Columbus and on from there finally to Cincinnati, which they reached ...
Page 13
... never “servants,” however, always “help”—the total lack of refinement and culture (only at the Reverend Timothy Flint's home had Mrs. Trollope located culture in Cincinnati); the monotonous hills surrounding, from the crests of which ...
... never “servants,” however, always “help”—the total lack of refinement and culture (only at the Reverend Timothy Flint's home had Mrs. Trollope located culture in Cincinnati); the monotonous hills surrounding, from the crests of which ...
Page 24
... never doubted the real existence of these phantoms, nor had I ever suspected that other people had not seen them as distinctly as myself. I now, however”—for the first time, not earlier than when he was nine!—“began to discover with no ...
... never doubted the real existence of these phantoms, nor had I ever suspected that other people had not seen them as distinctly as myself. I now, however”—for the first time, not earlier than when he was nine!—“began to discover with no ...
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