Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811 at Litchfield, Connecticut. The first twelve years of her life were spent in the intellectual atmosphere of Litchfield, which was a famous resort of ministers, judges, lawyers, and professional men.
When about twelve, she went to Hartford, where her sister Catherine had opened a school. While there she was known as an absent-minded and moody young lady, odd in her manner and habits, but a fine scholar, excelling especially in the writing of compositions. In 1832, her father assumed the presidency of Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio. On the fifth of January, 1836, she married Professor Calvin E. Stowe, a man of learning and distinction. In Cincinnati, she came into contact with fugitive slaves.
Stowe was catapulted to international fame with the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851. Today the novel is often labeled condescending, but its characters still have the power to move our hearts. Though “Uncle Tom” has become a synonym for a fawning black yes-man, Stowe’s Tom is actually American literature’s first black hero. Following publication of the book, she became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe. First published in weekly installments from June 5, 1851, to April 1, 1852, in the journal National Era, Stowe’s novel created such a controversy that when she was introduced to President Abraham Lincoln in 1862, he is said to have greeted her with the words: “So you are the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!”
She wrote A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853) extensively documenting the realities on which the book was based, to refute critics who tried to argue that it was inauthentic; and published a second anti-slavery novel, Dred in 1856. She died on July 1, 1896, at age eighty-five, in Hartford, Connecticut.