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 9
... true friends were few. Georgiana May back in Hartford was one such. To Georgiana, Harriet wrote candidly, in the spring of 1833, of ill health and low spirits since coming to Cincinnati. Her new surroundings appeared somehow less ...
... true friends were few. Georgiana May back in Hartford was one such. To Georgiana, Harriet wrote candidly, in the spring of 1833, of ill health and low spirits since coming to Cincinnati. Her new surroundings appeared somehow less ...
Page 14
... true; but highly profitable. Salt pork was the staple of a sailor's diet, and the British government had earlier contracted to get much of its mess pork from Cincinnati. From that boon had arisen industries associated with a pork ...
... true; but highly profitable. Salt pork was the staple of a sailor's diet, and the British government had earlier contracted to get much of its mess pork from Cincinnati. From that boon had arisen industries associated with a pork ...
Page 21
... true to its object as the needle to the polar star.” These new feelings he would express even more graphically, feelings of what he called “inseperableness, as though my blood somehow circulated through your veins, and if you were to be ...
... true to its object as the needle to the polar star.” These new feelings he would express even more graphically, feelings of what he called “inseperableness, as though my blood somehow circulated through your veins, and if you were to be ...
Page 34
... true: all her life Harriet Beecher Stowe was famously detached, daydreamingly remote, in her own word absent. “I,” Calvin went on, “want prayers and meals at the particular time, and every piece of furniture in its own place. You can ...
... true: all her life Harriet Beecher Stowe was famously detached, daydreamingly remote, in her own word absent. “I,” Calvin went on, “want prayers and meals at the particular time, and every piece of furniture in its own place. You can ...
Page 38
... true. For a long while, ever since before her marriage, Harriet had made time in her day to write and was earning money doing so. In such straits as these, writing seemed all the more necessary, for health of mind and to supplement a ...
... true. For a long while, ever since before her marriage, Harriet had made time in her day to write and was earning money doing so. In such straits as these, writing seemed all the more necessary, for health of mind and to supplement a ...
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