Harriet Beecher Stowe

STOWE, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896; ANTISLAVERY literature; UNCLE Tom's Cabin (Book : Stowe); EMANCIPATION of slaves; AMERICAN women authors; AMERICAN authors; AMERICAN novelists; MAYFLOWER: Sketches of Scenes & Characters among the Descendants of the Pilgrims, The (Book); ABOLITIONISTS; STOWE, Calvin; WOMEN abolitionists; ANTISLAVERY movements; PROTEST literature; AMERICAN Civil War, 1861-1865; DRED: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (Book)

This article chronicles the early life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin." Beecher was born in 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, to a devoutly religious family. Her mother died when she was four. She entered the Litchfield Academy in 1821 and was one of the first students to enroll in the Hartford Female Academy for teenage girls. In 1833, she won a magazine writing contest and later sold two pieces to the same magazine. As a faculty member at Western Female Institute, a college for young women in Cincinnati, Ohio, she learned more about slavery and abolitionism, the movement to abolish slavery in the South.