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 3
... sister's family in Hartford to picture the scene. See them, then, gathered in the front parlor of a Pennsylvania tavern. Father is opposite, seated at the table reading. Kate is writing a letter to that married sister who has chosen to ...
... sister's family in Hartford to picture the scene. See them, then, gathered in the front parlor of a Pennsylvania tavern. Father is opposite, seated at the table reading. Kate is writing a letter to that married sister who has chosen to ...
Page 4
Philip McFarland. a letter to that married sister who has chosen to stay behind in her settled life in Connecticut. Young Thomas, eight years old, sits beside his father making an entry in a journal of his own; and, wrote Harriet, ten ...
Philip McFarland. a letter to that married sister who has chosen to stay behind in her settled life in Connecticut. Young Thomas, eight years old, sits beside his father making an entry in a journal of his own; and, wrote Harriet, ten ...
Page 5
... sister, who lived with the family. “I was in such a state of emotion and excitement I could not speak, and she was frightened. At last I told her. It was the greatest thought that ever entered my soul; it filled it, and displaced every ...
... sister, who lived with the family. “I was in such a state of emotion and excitement I could not speak, and she was frightened. At last I told her. It was the greatest thought that ever entered my soul; it filled it, and displaced every ...
Page 6
... sister down from Boston; the grown Catharine by his first wife over from Hartford; and his son George from New Haven and Yale, determined to finish his ministerial studies out west at Lane. “Well, my dear,” another emigrating daughter ...
... sister down from Boston; the grown Catharine by his first wife over from Hartford; and his son George from New Haven and Yale, determined to finish his ministerial studies out west at Lane. “Well, my dear,” another emigrating daughter ...
Page 11
... sister having set up a school twenty-five miles from Litchfield, at Hartford, Harriet— just entering her teens—came there first as a student, then, still very young, as a teacher. At this Hartford Female Seminary she met Georgiana May ...
... sister having set up a school twenty-five miles from Litchfield, at Hartford, Harriet— just entering her teens—came there first as a student, then, still very young, as a teacher. At this Hartford Female Seminary she met Georgiana May ...
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