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Joan D. Hedrick

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Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life Paperback – June 1, 1995

by Joan D. Hedrick (Author)

4.2 26 ratings

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"Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject....But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak." Thus did Harriet Beecher Stowe announce her decision to begin work on what would become one of the most influential novels ever written. The subject she had hesitated to "meddle with" was slavery, and the novel, of course, was Uncle Tom's Cabin. Still debated today for its portrayal of African Americans and its unresolved place in the literary canon, Stowe's best-known work was first published in weekly installments from June 5, 1851 to April 1, 1852. It caused such a stir in both the North and South, and even in Great Britain, that when Stowe met President Lincoln in 1862 he is said to have greeted her with the words, "So you are the little woman who wrote the book that created this great war!"
In this landmark book, the first full-scale biography of Harriet Beecher Stowe in over fifty years, Joan D. Hedrick tells the absorbing story of this gifted, complex, and contradictory woman. Hedrick takes readers into the multilayered world of nineteenth century morals and mores, exploring the influence of then-popular ideas of "true womanhood" on Stowe's upbringing as a member of the outspoken Beecher clan, and her eventful life as a writer and shaper of public opinion who was also a mother of seven. It offers a lively record of the flourishing parlor societies that launched and sustained Stowe throughout the 44 years of her career, and the harsh physical realities that governed so many women's lives. The epidemics, high infant mortality, and often disastrous medical practices of the day are portrayed in moving detail, against the backdrop of western expansion, and the great social upheaval accompanying the abolitionist movement and the entry of women into public life.
Here are Stowe's public triumphs, both before and after the Civil War, and the private tragedies that included the death of her adored eighteen month old son, the drowning of another son, and the alcohol and morphine addictions of two of her other children. The daughter, sister, and wife of prominent ministers, Stowe channeled her anguish and her ambition into a socially acceptable anger on behalf of others, transforming her private experience into powerful narratives that moved a nation.
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. Perceptive and engaging, it illuminates the career of a major writer during the transition of literature from an amateur pastime to a profession, and offers a fascinating look at the pains, pleasures, and accomplishments of women's lives in the last century.

Print length

544 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Oxford University Press
Publication date

June 1, 1995
Dimensions

9.09 x 5.91 x 1.29 inches
ISBN-10

0195096398
ISBN-13

978-0195096392
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Hedrick interprets the life of her remarkable subject as a shrewdly adaptive and emotionally fulfilling assertion of creativity and moral authority on the face of numerous constraints."--The New England Quarterly

"Thoroughly researched, carefully documented, and clearly written, it is a recommended read."--Register of the Kentucky Historical Society

"Hedrick is particularly eloquent in interpreting Stowe's personal life and womanly sorrows, implicitly recognizing Stowe's identifications with enslaved suffering, especially among females...This absorbing, richly detailed biography captures the historical and literary significance of Harriet Beecher Stowe, and places her squarely in feminist scholarship. The research is daunting and the interpretive narration thoroughly engaging...Hedick's accomplishment is monumental. This book is excellent popular and scholarly reading."--American Historical Review

"For its daring reconceptualization of American literary history, its panoramic view of nineteenth-century middle-class culture, and its keen insight into the art and personality of a major woman writer, scholars will find Hedrick's book indispensable. No one in the fields of American literature, American Studies, Women's Studies, or feminist criticism can afford to miss it, and no one in search of agreat read will want to overlook it."--Legacy, a Journal of American Women Writers

"It's a pleasure to see this 1994 New York Times award-winner in paperback: this means new audiences will have access to and be able to afford Hedrick's spirited version of Stowe's life and achievements."--Reviewer's Bookwatch

A New York Times Book Review Noteworthy Collection

"Joan D. Hedrick makes an extraordinary effort to place Stowe's life in a wider context, creating a much better understanding of her career and her personal life."--Florida Historical Quarterly

"Hedrick has explored carefully the social and spiritual life of Stowe as well as the cultural and literary era that shaped her. A deep and compelling portrait emerges, creating a better understanding of Stowe not only as a writer, but also as a strong, personable woman."--KLIATT

"Intelligent, thoroughly researched...Helps us understand [Stowe's] contradictions by locating Stowe within the cultural context of her time, and in doing so, gives us an indelible portrait of 19th-century America."--The Wall Street Journal

"A classic biography--engrossing, capacious, definitive."--E.L. Doctorow, The New York Times Book Review

"A far-reaching and brilliantly synthesized narrative that not only relates Stowe's complex personal story, but also captures the ferment and verve of America's antebellum era...A major achievement."--Booklist

"Harriet Beecher Stowe's life spanned the nineteenth century, and her curiosity, career and enormous family kept her in touch with most of the major and minor movements of her time, from aboltionism to hydrotherapy, feminism to spiritualism. Astonishingly, Joan Hedrick's perceptive and wide-ranging account is the first significant analysis of Stowe's life in fifty years. And her book is so essential to understanding the evolution of middle-class women and nineteenth-century culture that it is hard to imagine how we have managed to get along without it....One of Hedrick's greatest contributions is her lucid presentation of the rise and fall of women's domination of the nineteenth-century fiction market."--The Nation

"Immensely readable."--Library Journal

"She gives us a vivid sense of the political controversies...during the headlong, unsettling period that led up to the Civil War."--The Washington Post

"Walks just the right line between storytelling and historical analysis. Drawing on the fine feminist scholarship of Kathryn Kish Sklar, Carroll Smith-Rosenberg and Ann Douglas, she refuses to unify or prettify the contradictions in Stowe's work and temperament: the way she will seize on a cliche, then unearth a revelations."--The New York Times

"For the first time...a genuinely satisfactory life of [Harriet Beecher Stowe]."--The New Republic

"A splendid, balanced representation of an author in her many roles, and of the way she changed her world."--Kirkus Reviews

"For a long time will remain the authoritative biography."--New York Newsday

"Exhaustive and richly detailed."--The Boston Book Review

"[A] landmark book."--Women's Review of Books

"Hedrick's excellent biography gives the contemporary reader a fresh look at the life of a powerful writer, a genuine moral force and an epochal figure in the modern history of women...This new biography does something even more important than tell Stowe's life and do justice to its greatest work. Hedrick has not only done exemplary research, she has also read carefully and with evident passion in the extraordinary scholarship of women's history and culture that mostly women scholars have produced in the last few decades. Her book retells Stowe's own story in terms of what has been learned about women's lives...This biography will surely direct readers to Stowe's work...It will also help readers to understand why the cutlrue wars continue and will continue because, as Stowe understood, literary ground is contested ground or writing isn't worth writing or reading."--Los Angeles Times Book Review

"A masterly biography, the best I've read in a great while. Hedrick's understanding of Stowe and her times is so deep, detailed, and assured that she can concentrate on the narrative, putting information and critical sophistication in the service of the story. This makes for good, rich reading--literary biography at its finest."--Phyllis Rose, author of Woman of Letters: A Life of Virginia Woolf

"Will likely create a stampede of new interest in both the writer and her works...Hedrick is a subtle yet forcefully clear writer...Hedrick has ensured that this complex and extraordinary woman, Harriet Beecher Stowe, will not be so easily forgotten at the next shift in literary taste."--The Virginian-Pilot and the Ledger-Star

"Hedrick has demonstrated a striking ability to weave together the varied elements of Stowe's life in a lucid and lively narrative, to use a wealth of letters with originality and grace, and to make Stowe and her world tangible. With this biography, Stowe has taken her place in the incredibly rich social and cultural milieu of nineteenth-century America, an America of revivals, early industrial capitalism, social reform, and women's entry into public life."--Mary Kelley, author of Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America

"Harriet Beecher Stowe is a monumental work of scholarship that provides a brilliant analysis of one of the most powerful, popular, and controversial writers in the annals of American literature."--Lois Rudnick, author of Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds

"Joan D. Hedrick, in an impressive act of scholarship, reexamines the life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, revealing a detailed portrait of one of the first female professional writers in America."--Stanley Archer, Magill's Literary Annual

"In this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography, Joan Hedrick has given us not only a sensitive, nuanced portrait of Harriet Beecher Stowe but also an encapsulation of the major themes in nineteenth-century historical development. This is a biography which does not ignore historical context and thus renders comprehensible many of the seeming contradictions in Stowe's life and thought."--Altina L. Waller, University of Connecticut

"Splendid"--Nancy Fix Anderson, Nineteenth Century Prose

About the Author

Joan D. Hedrick is the author of Solitary Comrade: Jack London and His Work, and the Director of Women's Studies and Associate Professor of History at Trinity College, Hartford.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Oxford University Press; Revised ed. edition (June 1, 1995)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 544 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0195096398
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0195096392
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.8 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 9.09 x 5.91 x 1.29 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #375,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #154 in Family Practice Medicine
- #1,702 in Author Biographies
- #4,338 in Women's Biographies

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4.2 26 ratings

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M. Meahl

Stowe's Nineteenth-Century Rollercoaster Life

Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2023

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After visiting the Harriet Beecher Stowe Museum, in Hartford, CT, this past fall, I decided to buy Joan Hedrick’s biography of HBS. It is epic in its scope, research, writing, and analysis. Although Hedrick is a scholarly author, her book on Stowe is accessible to all—it is no surprise that she won the Pulitzer Prize for it in 1995. It’s on par with Chernow’s Washington: A Life and Caroline Fraser’s biography of Laura Ingalls Wilder—both Pulitzer winners that I have also read.

I was in the mood for an absorption into the nineteenth-century life of such a prolific author as Stowe. Being a mother and writer myself, I wanted to know more. Specifically, how was she able to balance the two jobs with many children underfoot? How did she deal with her self-absorbed husband? How did she go on after the death of four out of her seven children? What drove her to deviate from her usual topics to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

Stowe was a failed housewife in an age when that just wasn’t acceptable and many women suffered so much (mentally and physically) because of the expectations put on them by a patriarchal society. She avoided complete meltdowns by help from nannies, her sister, and hired women who enabled her to write for money—which the family needed desperately. The system worked. Travel to Europe and Florida also buoyed her sprits, at times, during her long life.

Although Stowe attempted to be more active in the antislavery and women’s movements her heart was in her writing and family. No one can deny, however, that she did her part to ending American slavery through her brain and pen.

As a struggling researcher and writer, I really appreciate the work that Hedrick put into this book.

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Joel Marks

Women's liberation and influence

Reviewed in the United States on February 3, 2023

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This is a hefty volume that is not written mellifluously but nevertheless is gripping for its subject matter. There is an huge amount of fascinating material packed into it, often on topics that never would even have occurred to me or think might interest me.

Most amazing of course is the career of Harriet Beecher Stowe. But it is the perfect vehicle to explore such general themes as the distinct cultures of the United States in the Nineteenth Century, from New England refinement to Midwestern wildness, the burdens and rewards of domestic life, Christian religiosity and dissensions, the progress of women from seen-but-not-heard to the forefront of liberal and radical movements, the regress from the literary freedom of the parlor to the narrow strictures of male-dominated publishing and editing and criticism, and so forth.

Stowe herself is a creature of her times, as well as of a particular social set, yet also a remarkable individual filled with passions, contradictions, strengths and weaknesses. Her life was as full as a life could be, with tragedies and triumphs.

This book does justice to all of that. Well worth reading.

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tides24

A Wonderful Biography, A Wonderful History

Reviewed in the United States on September 12, 2004

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I'm very glad that some of the negative reviews didn't put me off this book. It is not only a wonderful biography of the life of this great author, but it is an excellent history of so much of the 19th century. Mind you, it's not light, summertime reading. I liked to read a chapter a night, because there was so much to savor and think about. I learned a tremendous amount about life in that time, (how did any of our ancestors survive long enough to bring us into the world?), and about everything from the anti-slavery movement, to women's rights, to the religious fervor of the day. It provided a comprehensive look at the development of a nation and a national character.

Of course, the centerpiece of it all is Mrs. Stowe, and she really came alive for me. The author makes good use of letters, so Mrs. Stowe, her family and friends can speak for themselves. And what a family it was! The famous Beecher clan in all its glory! Through the development of Mrs. Stowe's writing, we also see a change in how literature was viewed. From "Parlor Literature" which led to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" being read by all classes, it eventually became divided into high-class versus popular...what was critically acclaimed as opposed to what the people liked. It's a division that persists to this day, and led to Mrs. Stowe's masterpiece eventually being devalued as just melodramatic women's writing.

I think this is a first-class biography and history. There's a reason why it won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. It will stand as the definitive biography of a great author and a great lady.

15 people found this helpful

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a reader

A very well constructed view of 19th century America

Reviewed in the United States on October 3, 2013

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The author covers a lot more than the life of HBS in this book. While Ms. Hedrick does a very strong job of covering her subject, she does an equally thorough job of diving into the social, political, religious and literary issues and events of the era. The author goes in-depth on the role of women in American society including fact-based discussions of voting rights, women's suffrage, sexual subjugation, the 13th and 14th amendments, slavery (obviously) and the role of women in religion. Her coverage of the Calvinist theological precepts and the role that her family played in it in the mid 1800's was very well put together. Same goes for Hedrick's deep dive into the politics of the literary world of HBS's time. I particularly enjoyed reading about the Atlantic Monthly and the literary "powers that were" of that institution and time.

Regarding the bio itself. Hedrick toughs a terrific job of covering the full spectrum of HBS's life. She presents HBS as a devoted mother, a brilliant and authentic author, a disciplined intellectual and a brave soul working very effectively in the male dominated world of the publishing and literary circles. She also covers the nuances and personal shortcomings of HBS as well as her parental challenges and pain.

There are so few great biographies of American women of the 19th century--this is one of them and if you want to learn much about America of that time then this is a must read.

3 people found this helpful

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Joseph Matsiko

Only got a sample

Reviewed in the United States on January 19, 2023

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I only got a sample of the boom yet I paid the full price

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