Stowe in Her Own Time: A Biographical Chronicle of Her Life, Drawn from Recollections, Interviews, and Memoirs by Family, F (Writers in Their Own Time) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1587297825 ISBN 13: 9781587297823

Publisher: University Of Iowa Press, 2009

Synopsis

One of the first celebrity authors, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896) became famous almost overnight when Uncle Tom’s Cabin—which sold more than 300,000 copies in its first year of publication—appeared in 1852. Known by virtually all famous writers in the United States and many in England and regarded by many women writers as a role model because of her influence in the literary marketplace, Stowe herself was the subject of many books, articles, essays, and poems during her lifetime.

This volume brings together for the first time a range of primary materials about Stowe’s private and public life written by family members, friends, and fellow writers who knew or were influenced by her before and after Uncle Tom’s Cabin catapulted her to fame. Included are periodical articles by Fanny Fern and Charles Dudley Warner; biographical essays by Sarah Josepha Hale and Rose Terry Cooke; letters by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, and Harriet Jacobs; recollections by Frederick Douglass, Annie Adams Fields, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and Charles Beecher; and poems by Paul Laurence Dunbar and John Greenleaf Whittier. An introduction at the beginning of each essay connects it to its historical and cultural context, explanatory notes provide information about people and places, and the book includes a detailed introduction and a chronology of Stowe’s life. 

The thirty-eight recollections gathered in Stowe in Her Own Time form a biographical narrative designed to provide several perspectives on the famous author, sometimes in conflict and sometimes in agreement but always perceptive. The figure who emerges from this insightful, analytical collection is far more complex than the image she helped construct in her lifetime.

About this title

About the Author:

Susan Belasco is professor of English and Women's and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. She has authored, coauthored, edited, and coedited numerous books and articles on American literature, including Leaves of Grass: The Sesquicentennial Essays, The Bedford Anthology of American Literature, and Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America.

Review:

"These thirty-eight well-chosen and well-edited selections could be titled 'Stowe "and" Her Times.' In them, both the author and her contemporary audience come into focus in striking, complex, and illuminating ways."--Stephen Railton, University of Virginia

"Belasco gives us a wide range of first-person perspectives, from protective family members, to fellow abolitionists such as Oliver Wendell Holmes, to African American colleagues and critics such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Jacobs. The result is a complex and very human portrait. An excellent book for both the specialist and the general reader."--Elizabeth Ammons, Harriet H. Fay Professor of Literature, Tufts University, and editor, "Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin": A Casebook"

About this edition

• Publisher: University Of Iowa Press
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1587297825
• ISBN 13: 9781587297823
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 332
• Editor: Belasco Susan