Harriet Beecher Stowe

Profession: Abolitionist and Author

Nationality:

Biography: Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist. She is best known for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin, a depiction of life for African Americans under slavery which energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South.

Stowe was the sixth of 11 children to Lyman Beecher and Roxana Foote. Her mother died when she was five, and Harriet was greatly influenced by her father, an outspoken preacher, and her siblings, including her sister Catharine and brother Henry Ward Beecher. She received an education at the Hartford Female Seminary and later joined her father in Cincinnati at the Lane Theological Seminary.

She gained first-hand knowledge of slavery and its evils while living in Cincinnati, where the city’s trade attracted escaped slaves and Irish immigrants. She attended the Lane Debates on Slavery, witnessed the effects of the 1829 and 1836 riots, and befriended escaped slaves. These experiences deeply informed her future writing. It was in Cincinnati that she met her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe.

The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which penalized aiding escaped slaves, galvanized Stowe. While living in Brunswick, Maine, she authored Uncle Tom's Cabin, first serialized between June 5, 1851, and April 1, 1852, in The National Era. The novel sold 300,000 copies within a year and was influential in both America and Britain.

Stowe's vivid portrayal of slavery fueled the abolition movement, and this book remains her most significant contribution. Her meeting with President Abraham Lincoln in 1862 is remembered, though the exact details are uncertain.

In her later years, Stowe was involved in property ownership in Florida, supporting integration, and was engaged in the issues of women's rights. With her health failing after her husband's death in 1886, she retreated from public life.

Stowe's legacy includes landmarks and institutions bearing her name, such as the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Cincinnati and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. She was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame and had a 75¢ postage stamp issued in her honor in 2007.

Born: June 14, 1811
Birthplace: Litchfield, Connecticut, USA
Star Sign: Gemini

Died: July 1, 1896 (aged 85)