Literary Maine

Maine Literature

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Harriet Beecher Stowe is remembered most today as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold 10,000 copies in its first week off the press and helped solidify opposition to slavery before the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln greeted her during a visit in 1862 as “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” After publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe became an international celebrity and very popular author.

Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, to a dynamic Congregationalist minister who preached vociferously against slavery. The family prized education, and many of the Harriet’s 10 brothers and sisters became social reformers. Harriet attended and later taught at Hartford Female Seminary. In 1832 her father moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he took a position at Lane Theological Seminary. There, Harriet met and married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor at Lane, and the two began to establish their family. Cincinnati was across the river from Kentucky, a slave state, and it was here that Harriet observed and learned to abhor slavery.

In 1850 Calvin Stowe moved the family to Brunswick, Maine, where he joined the faculty of his alma mater, Bowdoin College. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was first published in an abolitionist newspaper, The National Era, was written largely in Brunswick. In 1852 the story was published in book form. Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought the evils of slavery to the attention of Americans more vividly than ever before.

From Brunswick, the Stowes moved in 1863 to Andover, Massachusetts, where Calvin taught at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1864, after his retirement, the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Here they built their house, Oakholm. In 1873, the Stowes moved to their last home, the brick Victorian house on Forest Street in Hartford.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House
63 Federal St.
Brunswick, Maine 04011

The Harriet Beecher Stowe House, a National Historic Landmark, is the place where this influential writer penned her monumental novel, forever changing America’s attitude toward slavery. The house currently operates as a restaurant and hotel and is open to the public.