Loves of Harriet Beecher Stowe

June 4, 2007
Despite the racy title, McFarland (Hawthorne in Concord
) has not penned a salacious tell-all about Harriet Beecher Stowe's romantic life, but rather a fairly unremarkable biography of Stowe and the whole Beecher family. Though ostensibly organized around the three men important to Harriet—her father, her brother and her husband—the device is really just a gimmick that leads to confusing departures from chronology, as when McFarland summarizes the childhood of Harriet's father halfway through the book. The most perceptive sections deal with Stowe's literary career. McFarland argues that Poganuc People
is her most “coherent” work, and that Uncle Tom's Cabin
, the abolitionist novel that made Stowe an international star, was born in part out of her experience as a mother: when her young son died, Stowe was sensitized to the plight of slave mothers separated from their children. This narrative is sure to be overshadowed by Debby Applegate's Pulitzer Prize–winning study of Stowe's brother, The Most Famous Man in America
(2006); Joan Hedrick's Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life
(1994), to which McFarland acknowledges his debt, will remain definitive.

November 1, 2007
McFarland's ("Hawthorne in Concord") complex biography culls material mainly from three sources: Stowe's own "Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe" (1889), Robert Forrest Wilson's "Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe" (1941), and Joan D. Hedrick's "Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life" (1994). It is divided into three sections to reflect the loves of Stowe's life: her husband, Calvin; her father, Lyman; and her brother, Henry (though one could argue that writing was her main love). Stowe's success publishing extensively on a freelance basis and the fame she achieved with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" were no small feats, especially considering she mothered seven children. McFarland's most interesting revelation is that Stowe at one point told her husband, "If I am to write, I must have a room to myself, which shall be my room." Privacy and time, however, were hard to come by. McFarland's work, which also draws on Stowe's correspondence, presents a remarkable life against the backdrop of a tense America dealing with civil war, slavery, and the advent of women's rights. It will appeal to advanced literature students and admirers of women writers. Recommended for larger public and academic libraries.Stacy Russo, Chapman Univ. Libs., Orange, CA

Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2007
The best-known member of the remarkable Beecher family was Harriet. She was, of course, the author of Uncle Toms Cabin, a widely praised and widely attacked novel that alerted many indifferent Northerners to the evils of chattel slavery. But she was a member of a clan that produced other prominent and historically significant figures. McFarland offers interesting profiles of family members that reveal much about them as well as providing a useful snapshot of antebellum northern society. Harriets father, Lyman, was a fiery, emotional preacher whose sermons attacked Unitarians, Catholics, and alcoholics, but he was reticent concerning the raging topic of slavery. One of his 13 children, Henry, was Harriets closest sibling and one of the most influential and eloquent preachers of the nineteenth century. Like Harriet, he was an ardent abolitionist, and he also campaigned for womens suffrage and even tried to reconcile scripture with the emerging science of evolution. Harriets public career is well known, but McFarland paints a touching portrait of her personal life, particularly regarding her 50-year marriage to Calvin Stowe.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)