Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

What I said on Amazon:

This is an excellent scholarly biography of Stowe, wonderfully researched and clearly written. Hedrick quotes generously from Stowe's letters, so the reader gets a feel for her voice and those of her family members. She puts Stowe's life in context beautifully, so besides being a great biography, it's also an excellent source on 19th-century millenialist, abolition, and suffrage movements and on the case of women writers & canon formation. Anyone who has read and liked Mary Kelly's Private Woman, Public Stage will like this book, too.

My only complaint is that the end rushes in -- Hedrick covers something like 14 years in the last chapter. Granted much of this time Stowe seemed to be developing Alzheimer's, but I show more would have liked a bit more detail. What was she doing in her lucid periods? What was her feminist sister Isabella doing and how did Stowe's youngest ne'er-do-well son go from a ship's boy to a Harvard student? These are quibbles, though. In fact, one of the things I most like about this book is that Hedrick doesn't supply information when there isn't any to be found. There's very little speculation here, no inappropriately imagined scenes, no "Stowe must have thought" or "Stowe must have done." For Hedrick, either it happened or it didnt; she knows the difference between a biography and a novel. show less

This book required a long slow read. Stowe`s influence on the Civil War was certainly important. Really surprised at all the other issues she dealt with in a time when women had little opportunity to speak out. I`m glad I persisted, as this book was tedious.

2621 Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life, by Joan D. Hedrick (read 26 Jun 1994) (Pulitzer Biography prize for 1995) Stowe was born in Litchfield, Conn., June 14, 1811 and died in Hartford, Conn., July 1, 1896. This book is written from a feminist standpoint, but this did not bother me. This is a good book. The blurb for it is "Magisterial in its breadth and rich in detail, this definitive portrait explores the full measure of Harriet Beecher Stowe's life and her contribution to American literature" and for once I agree the blurb is accurate.