Stowe, Harriet Beecher

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Novelist and abolitionist, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the author of the famous antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, published in 1852. She collected information about life on a plantation from Frederick Douglass and other blacks. She rallied antislavery sentiment in the North and received much praise and respect from African Americans. After the success of Uncle Tom's Cabin, black authors published a number of narratives, novels, plays and poems inspired by Stowe's writing. While Stowe's moral ideology was considered radical and progressive for the 19th century, her novel in the twentieth century has come to exemplify or represent racist misconceptions of African Americans.

by Aslaku Berhanu

References

Gerson, Noel Bertram. Harriet Beecher Stowe: a Biography. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1976

Sillen, Samuel.  Women Against Slavery. New York: Masses & Mainstream, 1955.