Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an America writer and abolitionist best known as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
She was born the seventh of eleven children to religious leader Lyman
Beecher and his wife Roxane, also deeply religious. She received a
classical education typically accorded only to males at the seminary
school run by her sister Catherine. At age 21 she joined her widower
father in Cincinnati, where he ran the Lane Theological Seminary. There
she met and married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a widower and professor at the
seminary and a vocal critic of slavery. She joined the Semi-Colon club, a
literary salon, and with her husband supported the Underground
Railroad. In 1850 she and her husband, now teaching at Bowdoin College,
were living in Brunswick, Maine, when she had a vision to write the
story of a dying slave. She submitted the first chapter entitled “The
Man Who Was A Thing” to the National Era newspaper, which
serialized the entire book between June 1851 and April 1852. It was
published in book form and went on to sell an unprecedented 300,000
copies, galvanizing the issue of slavery in the public discourse. Her
prominence led to her meeting President Lincoln at the White House in
Washington in 1862 after the start of the Civil War. She settled in
Hartford, where Mark Twain was a neighbor. She was a champion of rights
for women, likening the status of a married woman to that of a slave,
and helped found the Hartford Art School, which later became the
University of Hartford. She suffered from dementia in her later years
and exhibited bizarre behavior we know associate with Alzheimer’s
Disease. She is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Andover
Academy.
