Introduction

Biography

Harriet was the daugh­ter of Con­gre­ga­tion­al min­is­ter Ly­man Beech­er and Rox­an­na Foote, sis­ter of Hen­ry Ward Beech­er, and wife of Cal­vin El­lis Stowe, a pro­fess­or at Lane The­o­lo­gic­al Se­mi­na­ry (mar­ried 1836). Her mo­ther died when she was four years old.

At age 13, Stowe be­gan at­tend­ing a girls’ school in Hart­ford, Con­nec­ti­cut. In 1832, her fa­mi­ly moved to Cin­cin­na­ti, Ohio, where her fa­ther be­came head of Lane The­o­lo­gic­al Se­mi­na­ry.

In 1850, she be­came a pro­fess­or at Bow­doin Col­lege, Bruns­wick, Maine.

Works

Stowe wrote do­zens of books, in­clud­ing Un­cle Tom’s Ca­bin, an anti-slav­ery no­vel pub­lished in 1852. Most of her hymns appeared in her bro­ther Hen­ry’s 1855 Ply­mouth Col­lect­ion.