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Harriet Beecher Stowe was an authoress of many books, but one book by far is she best known for. That book is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. Probably no book except the Bible has so wide a sale within such a short period of time. More than 500,000 copies were sold in this country in five years. It has been translated into nearly every language of Europe and into some Asiatic languages. The sale outside the United States had reached nearly 1/2 million before her death in 1896.
Harriet was the daughter of Rev. Lyman Beecher and was born in Litchfield, Connecticut in 1812. As a child her favorite novels were Scott’s “Ballads” and “Arabian Nights”, which undoubtedly cultivated her keen imagination.
At the age of fifteen she became assistant to her sister Catherine in the female seminary at Hartford and continued teaching until the time of her marriage to Professor Calvin E. Stowe. Professor Stowe was one of the faculty of Lane Theological Seminary at Cincinnati, Ohio, of which Dr. Beecher had become president.
Both Harriet and her husband staunch abolitionists. In fact, their home was part of the “underground railroad” helping slaves escape to Canada. Since their home was one of the “stations”, Harriet had made the acquaintance with many fugitive slaves and that association fueled the fire which years afterwards blazed out in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.
The slavery question was hotly debated by the students in the seminary, until the trustees forbade its discussion and scores of students left. Soon after the passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, Professor Stowe was called to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, and it was here that Mrs. Stowe wrote her infamous book.
“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared first as a serial in “The National Era”, then in book for; and presses were kept running day and night to meet the demand. Prince Albert, Earl of Shaftesbury, Macaulay, Dickens, and Kingsley received gift copies and each wrote a letter of deep sympathy and praise.
When Harriet visited Europe the next year, people vied with each other to do her honor, and more than half a million women signed a memorial addressed to her.
Mrs. Stowe wrote many other books. “The Minister’s Wooing”, “Pearl of Orr’s Island”, “Oldtown Folks”, “My Wife and I”, “We and Our Neighbors”, “Footsteps of the Master”, “Bible Heroines”, and “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” are a few examples.
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