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 33
Page 20
... summer of 1834, having set off for a first visit back to New England since coming west two years earlier. She was ... summer. The causes of its reappearance were no better understood on this visitation than when the disease had first ...
... summer of 1834, having set off for a first visit back to New England since coming west two years earlier. She was ... summer. The causes of its reappearance were no better understood on this visitation than when the disease had first ...
Page 33
... summer to display its new bibliographic treasures on the lawn. And by then the flourishing professor, who was also Lane's librarian, had submitted to the Ohio legislature his other charge, a Report on Elementary Instruction in Europe ...
... summer to display its new bibliographic treasures on the lawn. And by then the flourishing professor, who was also Lane's librarian, had submitted to the Ohio legislature his other charge, a Report on Elementary Instruction in Europe ...
Page 36
... summer of 1837 this mild-mannered scholar of biblical literature was ready to “throw Lane Seminary to the dogs if they do not justice to me in this respect, and you may tell them so.” That was said to his wife, daughter of Lane's ...
... summer of 1837 this mild-mannered scholar of biblical literature was ready to “throw Lane Seminary to the dogs if they do not justice to me in this respect, and you may tell them so.” That was said to his wife, daughter of Lane's ...
Page 43
... summer of 1843. She arrived on June 30 in time for evening prayers. This eldest of the Beecher children found everyone at her brother's household “in unusual health & prosperity—George had come in from his Friday lecture and seemed in ...
... summer of 1843. She arrived on June 30 in time for evening prayers. This eldest of the Beecher children found everyone at her brother's household “in unusual health & prosperity—George had come in from his Friday lecture and seemed in ...
Page 45
... summer of 1845, to attend a ministers' convention in Detroit when Harriet wrote to him, despondent, on June 16. “My Dear Husband,—It is a dark, sloppy, rainy, muddy, disagreeable day, and I have been working hard (for me) all day in the ...
... summer of 1845, to attend a ministers' convention in Detroit when Harriet wrote to him, despondent, on June 16. “My Dear Husband,—It is a dark, sloppy, rainy, muddy, disagreeable day, and I have been working hard (for me) all day in the ...
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