Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Best remembered as the author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe was born into a talented Litchfield family headed by noted preacher Lyman Beecher. After attending the Litchfield Female Academy, Stowe studied and later taught at the Hartford Female Seminary, headed by her sister Catherine. In 1832 the family moved to Ohio, where she began publishing her work and married biblical scholar Calvin Ellis Stowe. After struggles with poverty, poor health, domestic strife, and the death of a child, Stowe found financial security and international fame with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 1850s. After a long and varied writing career, she died in Hartford.
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The Most Famous American in the World
In 1853, in cities and villages across Britain and Europe, throngs of admirers pushed to catch a glimpse of a barely 5-foot-tall writer from America whose best-selling novel had taken slavery to task. …[more]