1. Home
  2. Education
  3. Women's History

Harriet Beecher Stowe

By Jone Johnson Lewis, About.com

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe - 1862

Image (c) 2002 Jone Johnson Lewis
Dates: (June 14, 1811 - July 1, 1896)
Occupation: writer, teacher, reformer
Known for: author of Uncle Tom's Cabin, a book which helped build anti-slavery sentiment in America and abroad
About Harriet Beecher Stowe: Harriet Beecher Stowe - detailed biography
Also known as: Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe, Harriet Stowe, Christopher Crowfield
Family: Harriet Beecher Stowe was the seventh child of Lyman Beecher and his first wife Roxana.
  • Father: Lyman Beecher (famous Congregationalist minister; president, Lane Theological Seminary, Cincinnati, Ohio)
  • Mother: Roxana Foote Beecher (granddaughter of General Andrew Ward; "mill girl" before marriage; died when Harriet was four)
  • brothers William Beecher, Edward Beecher, George Beecher, Henry Ward Beecher, Charles Beecher and half-brothers Thomas Beecher and James Beecher (five became ministers)
  • sisters Catherine Beecher and Mary Beecher, half-sister Isabella Beecher Hooker
Education:
  • Ma'am Kilbourne's School
  • Litchfield Academy
  • Hartford Female Seminary (run by Catherine Beecher)
Marriage, Children:
  • husband: Calvin Ellis Stowe (married January 1836; biblical scholar)
  • seven children:
    • Eliza and Harriet (twin daughters, born September 1837)
    • Henry (drowned 1857)
    • Frederick (served as cotton plantation manager at Stowe's plantation in Florida; lost at sea in 1871)
    • Georgiana
    • Samuel Charles (died 1849, 18 months old, of cholera)
    • Charles
About Harriet Beecher Stowe:

Harriet Beecher Stowe is best known for writing Uncle Tom's Cabin in which she expresses her moral outrage at the institution of slavery and its destructive effects on both whites and blacks. She portrays the evils of slavery as especially damaging to maternal bonds, as mothers dread the sale of their children. Written and published in installments between 1851 and 1852, publication in book form brought financial success.

Publishing nearly a book a year between 1862 and 1884, Harriet Beecher Stowe Stowe moved from her early focus on slavery in such works as Uncle Tom's Cabin and another novel, Dred, to deal with religious faith, domesticity, and family life.

When Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have exclaimed, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!"

Religion: Congregationalist; later, Episcopalian, spiritualist

More About Harriet Beecher Stowe

More women's history biographies, by name:

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Explore Women's History

More from About.com

  1. Home
  2. Education
  3. Women's History
  4. Art, Music, Writers, Media
  5. Writers
  6. Women Writers 1801-1900
  7. Harriet Beecher Stowe
  8. About Harriet Beecher Stowe

©2008 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.