Harriet Beecher Stowe: Quick Facts

Written and fact-checked by

The Information Architects of Encyclopaedia Britannica

Facts

Also Known As	Harriet Elizabeth Beecher
Born	June 14, 1811 • Litchfield • Connecticut
Died	July 1, 1896 (aged 85) • Hartford • Connecticut
Awards And Honors	Hall of Fame (1910)
Notable Works	“Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp” • “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” • “The Minister’s Wooing” • “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”
Movement / Style	American Renaissance
Notable Family Members	spouse Calvin E. Stowe • father Lyman Beecher • brother Henry Ward Beecher • sister Catharine Beecher • sister Isabella Beecher Hooker

Photos

Harriet Beecher Stowe, engraving, 1872, after an oil painting by Alonzo Chappel.

Illustration of Eliza carrying her son across icy stepping stones on the Ohio River at night, pursued by three men, from an 1870 theatrical poster for Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Scene from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin showing the body of Uncle Tom, who has been beaten to death by slave owner Simon Legree, and the angels, including Eva, awaiting his presence in heaven.

Illustration from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin that depicts Eva's death, c. 1870.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

Harriet Beecher Stowe, c. 1880

Topsy (left) and Little Eva, characters from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851–52); lithograph by Louisa Corbaux, 1852.

Color illustration from Uncle Tom's Cabin showing a slave auction scene, with a group of enslaved people on a platform and a trader examining a man for sale in front of a crowd.

See All Images →

William Wells Brown

William Wells Brown

American writer

Mark Twain

Mark Twain

American writer

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau

American writer

“Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos”

Walt Whitman

American poet

A son of Salem

Nathaniel Hawthorne

American writer

Master of the macabre

Edgar Allan Poe

American writer

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Ralph Waldo Emerson

American author

Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

American poet

James Russell Lowell.

James Russell Lowell

American poet and critic

portrait of John Greenleaf Whittier

John Greenleaf Whittier

American author

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

American physician and writer

default image

Albion W. Tourgée

American lawyer, judge, journalist, and novelist

default image

Charles Dudley Warner

American essayist

Henry James

Henry James

American writer

Portrait of Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet, looking over his shoulder in a collared shirt, circa 1965.

Jack Kerouac

American writer

default image

Tillie Olsen

American author

James Baldwin stands against a plain background in a dress shirt and tie, arms crossed, holding a cigarette, looking directly at the camera.

James Baldwin

American author

Theodore Dreiser

Theodore Dreiser

American author

Bret Easton Ellis seated in a red chair, wearing glasses and a black suit, resting his chin on his hand and looking at the camera at a Rome Film Festival event.

Bret Easton Ellis

American author

Joan Didion, 1970

Joan Didion

American author

Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) portrait by Carl Van Vecht April 3, 1938. Writer, folklorist and anthropologist celebrated African American culture of the rural South.

American Writers Quiz

Photograph of Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, Acme newspicture 1939.

Women in Art and Literature: Who Said It?

49 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular Literature Quizzes

Three stacked volumes of collected works by William Shakespeare. Shakespearean tragedies, Shakespearean comedies, books.

Literary Classics Quiz