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Harriet Beecher Stowe The daughter of Lyman and Roxana Beecher, Harriet was born on June 14, 1811 in Litchfield Connecticut. There were eight children in the Beecher family and Harriet was the youngest of them all. Her mother died in 1816 when Harriet was four, so Catherine, the oldest sibling, raised Harriet for most of her life. Catherine was a big influence in Harriet's life. Catherine was a very smart person.
In fact, she had an intellect beyond most people. She married a professor from Yale University who died in a shipwreck. For years Catherine was in grief and was on the verge of mentally collapsing. She continued on in this melancholy state of mind, until she finally was saved by her own determination to move on and make a life for herself and Harriet. So, Catherine founded an all girls seminary school in Hartford, Connecticut and Harriet started there for her education. Harriet thought an orphanage would have been just about as good as the seminary, because it was so hard and strict, religiously and educationally.
At this time in her life, Harriet was a heavy believer in religion, even though it was hard. Harriet started writing at this time. Her earliest preserved school composition was called Can the Immortality of the Soul be Proved by the Light of Nature? After teaching at the Hartford Female Seminary, which Catherine founded, Harriet moved to Cincinnati, Ohio to teach at a seminary where her father was president. She was 21 years old. While she was there, she met some of the other teachers, one of them being Calvin Stowe, her future husband.
After their wedding, Calvin and Harriet lived in Cincinnati for a while. In that time period she had been told horrible stories about slaves in the confederate state of Kentucky, which was right next to Cincinnati. These tales prompted her research and writing about slavery. On September 29, 1836 she gave birth to the first of her children, twin girls. Harriet will have had seven children all together.
One of the boys died in 1849 because of a huge epidemic of cholera in Cincinnati. The last child was born on July 8, 1850 and his name was Charles Edward. She was a good mother and enjoyed raising her children. Since 1833, Harriet had been publishing her first writings in the Western Monthly Magazine.
Harriet was one of very few women writers of the time, who could get published in a magazine. Some of her early sketching's were put in her first book The Mayflower. The story was about the descendants of Puritans and a lot of the characters in the story, like the characters of a lot of her stories, were based on real people in her life. Even though her first story was okay, it never foretold Harriet's future of being a famous author. After her children were born, she was thinking of writing bigger and better books.
Her husband was encouraging this, so she could help add to the family income, because they were pretty poor. She, then, moved her family to Maine, after 18 years in Ohio. She thought a lot about the stories she heard about slavery and about how her own life was in some ways similar to the slave situation and she had a vision. She started writing about her vision of the slaves. She submitted her writing to the newspaper and they put it out as a serial, which is a portion of a story continuing on every day. It was an immediate success, so they decided to publish it as Uncle Toms Cabin, the book.
The book, then, was made into a drama and was also an immediate success across the nation. Many people, when they first read Uncle Toms Cabin, think of Harriet as being a compassionate southerner, however her roots are deep within Yankee soil. During the Civil War, Stowe contributed a small part of her day as a part time assistant nurse. However, her second son Frederick William contributed significantly. Frederick was one of the earliest volunteers. His services, including serious injury, earned him a promotion in rank at Gettysburg and offered him the glory of storybook heroism.
Stowe became famous because of her writings and dramas and met many important people because of this, including the president. When she met President Lincoln, it is told that he said to her, So this is the little lady who started this big war! He was talking about the Civil War. She traveled to Europe and her first three visits were described in Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands. Stowe didnt enjoy the trip as much as she thought she would, but the part she says made it fun was meeting the celebrities and fans. When in Europe, she visited their schools and they had special gatherings in her honor.
When she went to Great Britain all the celebrities got together and made a special dinner for her. Some of the celebrities there were Macaulay, Dickens, Lady Byron and Sir William Hamilton. Uncle Toms Cabin was mainly about slaves and how they are treated. In the story Tom gets whipped to death and another slave was sold away from her mom. Stowe had no intention of the book being a fictional book, however, people thought differently. After Stowe became famous and people all around were reading Uncle Toms Cabin, some people didnt like what she was writing, because they thought that it was all false, lies, and people didnt really act like how she said they did.
People would attack her with insults and call her a liar. One incident where people said the book was false was when Harriet read the New York Courier and the Inquirer. Both papers said that a man being lashed to death and a girl being sold from her mother could never have happened openly in the real world. To prove that there was truth in her stories, Stowe decided to write a reference book and show people where she got her information from and prove that it was true.
That book was called The Key to Uncle Toms Cabin. Some of the sources in this book came from one of Harriet's brothers, Edward. Edward had experiences working in Alton, Illinois with a man named Eliza P. Lovejoy, studying the laws about governing slavery.
This book helped a lot for Stowe's reputation and people didnt attack her verbally with insults as much anymore. Between 1856 - 1859 she published another novel, Dred... Dred was about the cholera epidemic that Cincinnati had gone through when she lived there. During the epidemic, her infant son died of cholera. That persuaded her to write the story.
Also, between those years, her eldest son Henry died of drowning. Harriet continued writing for the rest of her life time. Although Uncle Toms Cabin and some of her other stories made a big hit, most of her stories were a flop, according to critics of the day. One of her best, but less famous, books was titled Lady Byron Vindicated. It got so many bad reviews that it almost ruined her reputation.
People were actually accusing her of publishing nothing but rubbish. Even though it got so many bad reviews, Harriet kept writing for the rest of her life. Here are some of the books she wrote between 1859 - 1878 The Ministers Wooing, The Pearl of Orr's Islan, Oldtown Folk, Palmetto-Leaves, and Pogunac People. Many people think that Harriet's life was a waste, because of all the unsuccessful books she wrote. They wonder what could have possibly inspired her.
Most of her books were written about her life and people in it. For example, Catherines life was essential for The Ministers Wooing, Oldtown Folk was based on events from Calvin's life and the cholera epidemics of Cincinnati were portrayed in Dred. Stowe's writings were all based on true world happenings. She hated the word fiction and the idea of fictitious literature. She thought fiction was repugnant. As Stowe grew older she couldnt physically do as many things as she used to.
Her interests turned back to the religion she knew as a child. She was never as heavy a believer as she was when she was a little girl, never- the- less late in life she would try to strengthen her faith. She started going back to church and focused on living a Christian life every day. Her father, who was in the ministry, always believed that all problems were religious problems.
Although Harriet never agreed with that philosophy, she still kept her faith. In 1878 Stowe had been forced to take the long rest that she needed after writing so many books. That rest turned out to be her retirement from book writing. A rumor started around that she was planning to write another book called Orange Blossoms, but it was just that rumor. After Harriet's career was over as a book writer, she kept on as a contributing editor to the magazines and newspapers, making money by writing short stories and articles. Some of the significant papers she wrote in were the Independent, Hearth and Home, and the Christian Union.
This was a very significant act in her writing career, because Harriet was old, but she was composing articles and stories at an incredible pace. She continued at this pace for a several years. Calvin died in 1886 and, soon after, Harriet moved to Hartford, Connecticut. She lived there for a number of years, but all she did was roam around pathetically, so people said. Then, after ten or so years of seclusion, she died in 1896.
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Research essay sample on Uncle Toms Cabin Rest Of Her Life
