Harriet Beecher Stowe
Overview
 
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...

. Her novel
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

 Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman....

(1852) was a depiction of life for African-Americans under slavery
Slavery
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work. Slaves can be held against their will from the time of their capture, purchase or birth, and deprived of the right to leave, to refuse to work, or to demand compensation...

; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...

. She wrote more than 20 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters.
Quotations

What makes saintliness in my view, as distinguished from ordinary goodness, is a certain quality of magnanimity and greatness of soul that brings life within the circle of the heroic.

"The Cathedral" in The Atlantic Monthly (1846)

The greater the interest involved in a truth the more careful, self-distrustful, and patient should be the inquiry. I would not attack the faith of a heathen without being sure I had a better one to put in its place, because, such as it is, it is better than nothing.

Letter to William Lloyd Garrison (1853)

Most mothers are instinctive philosophers.

The Minister's Wooing (1859) Ch. 21 The Bruised Flax-Flower

That ignorant confidence in one's self and one's future, which comes in life's first dawn, has a sort of mournful charm in experienced eyes, who know how much it all amounts to.

The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862)

In the old times, women did not get their lives written, though I don't doubt many of them were much better worth writing than the men's.

The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862)

The truth is the kindest thing we can give folks in the end.

The Pearl of Orr's Island : A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862)

 
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