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Harriet Beecher-Stowe
Life Time
14 June 1811 - 1 July 1896
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Harriet Elizabeth Beecher-Stowe was an American writer (1811-1896), the author of the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which during the life of the author caused a storm of negative reactions. Belonging to a religious-fanatic society, Harriet clearly sought for her novel the martyrs of modern times who died with the name of God on their lips, and it was not necessary to go far for such images: the bitter fate of enslaved Africans was literally “at hand”. Southerners, having read the novel,
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Harriet Elizabeth Beecher-Stowe was an American writer (1811-1896), the author of the famous book Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), which during the life of the author caused a storm of negative reactions.
Belonging to a religious-fanatic society, Harriet clearly sought for her novel the martyrs of modern times who died with the name of God on their lips, and it was not necessary to go far for such images: the bitter fate of enslaved Africans was literally “at hand”.
Southerners, having read the novel, were outraged to the core (this is the mood of another writer, Margaret Mitchell, conveyed through the lips of the heroine of the novel “Gone with the Wind”). Black servants often became family members, close people, and it was out of the question to whip someone to death. Beecher-Stowe had to work hard to prove her case: she publishes the manuscript “Key”, in which the facts confirm the real basis of her book.
However, distrust of Harriet, despite her best efforts, persisted. In 1869, she published an article, The True Story of Byron’s Wife, which sparked a new wave of protest. It occurred to the writer to accuse the poet of cohabiting with his half-sister, and on both sides of the ocean this version of Byron’s life seemed extremely outrageous. Harriet tried a tried-and-tested method: prove her right in a separate publication, but this time nobody listened to her. Some justification for Beecher Stowe, on the part of public opinion, was an understanding of the puritanical nature of the environment in which she lived prior to her marriage.
The writer lived to eighty-five years. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" has been reprinted many times, translated into many languages, including in Russia. The indisputable value of this work lies in only one thing: the assertion that slavery is an inhuman phenomenon. Every continent and every time. /