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
... stories he got from the various drivers, and leading us all in singing hymns and songs.” Fully alive and fresh from Yale at age twenty-three, George was keeping busy in the breeze topside, chatting with the stage driver, urging papers ...
... stories he got from the various drivers, and leading us all in singing hymns and songs.” Fully alive and fresh from Yale at age twenty-three, George was keeping busy in the breeze topside, chatting with the stage driver, urging papers ...
Page 26
... 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 Calvin's line of sight as he lay in ...
... 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 Calvin's line of sight as he lay in ...
Page 30
... stories and a most marvelous memory; but in his own words, “the only talent of a higher kind which I am conscious of possessing is a turn for accurate observation of men and things, and a certain broad humor and drollery.” That is far ...
... stories and a most marvelous memory; but in his own words, “the only talent of a higher kind which I am conscious of possessing is a turn for accurate observation of men and things, and a certain broad humor and drollery.” That is far ...
Page 55
... stories filled with mimicry and color; his letters crackle with anecdotes relayed in the accurately re-created dialects of acquaintances and strangers overheard. Harriet listened to Calvin's stories and used them in her writing; that ...
... stories filled with mimicry and color; his letters crackle with anecdotes relayed in the accurately re-created dialects of acquaintances and strangers overheard. Harriet listened to Calvin's stories and used them in her writing; that ...
Page 56
... stories to magazines. Some of what she wrote had even been gathered together and published, in 1843, through her sister Catharine's enterprise, as a book, The Mayflower, a collection that earned for its author a modest national fame. By ...
... stories to magazines. Some of what she wrote had even been gathered together and published, in 1843, through her sister Catharine's enterprise, as a book, The Mayflower, a collection that earned for its author a modest national fame. By ...
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