The Female Prose Writers of America/Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Elizabeth Beecher is the daughter of Rev. Lyman Beecher, D.D., and seems to have inherited much of the splendid talents of her father. She was born at Litchfield, Connecticut, June 15, 1812. She went to Cincinnati with her father’s family in the autumn of 1832. In the winter of 1836 she was married to Professor Calvin E. Stowe, of the Theological Seminary of that place. In 1850 Professor Stowe accepted a professorship in Bowdoin College, Brunswick, Maine, where the family now reside.
Mrs. Stowe’s writings are found principally in the various literary and religious periodicals of the country, and in a volume of tales, called “The Mayflower” published in 1843. She has not written so much as some of our female authors, but what she has written has left a profound impression. She is remarkable for the qualities of force and clearness. Few readers can resist the current of her argument, and none can mistake her meaning. She possesses also a great fund of wit, and a delicate play of fancy not inferior to our most imaginative writers.