Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1900, volume 5).djvu/751

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STOWE
STOWELL

what slavery really meant. She determined, if possible, to make them realize it, and, as a result of this determination, wrote “Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the Lowly.” In the mean time Prof. Stowe was appointed to the chair of biblical literature in the theological seminary at Andover, Mass., and removed thither with his family about the time that this remarkable book was published. Neither Mrs. Stowe nor any of her friends had the least conception of the future that awaited her book. She was herself very despondent. It does not seem to have been very widely read when it appeared in the “National Era,” at Washington, D. C., from June, 1851, till April, 1852, before it was issued in book-form (Boston, 1852). Mrs. Stowe says: “It seemed to me that there was no hope; that nobody would hear; that nobody would read, nobody would pity; that this frightful system which had pursued its victims into the free states might at last threaten them even in Canada.” Nevertheless, nearly 500,000 copies of this work were sold in the United States alone in the five years following its publication. It has been translated into Armenian, Bohemian, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hungarian, Illyrian, Polish, Portuguese, modern Greek, Russian, Servian, Spanish, Swedish, Wallachian, Welsh, and other languages. These versions are to be found in the British museum in London, together with the most extensive collection of the literature of this book. In reply to the abuse and recrimination that its publication called forth, Mrs. Stowe published, in 1853, “A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon which the Story is founded, together with Corroborative Statements verifying the Truth of the Work.” She also wrote “A Peep into Uncle Tom's Cabin, for Children” (1853). The story has been dramatized in various forms; once by the author as “The Christian Slave; a Drama” (1855). The character of Uncle Tom was suggested by the life of Josiah Henson (q. v.).

So reduced was Mrs. Stowe's health by her severe and protracted labors that complete rest and change of scene became necessary. Consequently, in the spring of 1853, accompanied by her husband and brother, the Rev. Charles Beecher, she sailed for England. In the following year appeared “Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands,” a collection of letters of Mrs. Stowe and her brother during their travels in Europe (2 vols., Boston, 1854). In 1856 she published “Dred, a Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp.” The same book was reissued, in 1866, under the title “Nina Gordon,” but has now been again issued under the original title. About this time Mrs. Stowe made a second visit to England, and an extended tour of the continent. In the judgment of some critics, by far the ablest work that had come from Mrs. Stowe's pen, in a purely literary point of view, is the “Minister's Wooing” (New York, 1859). It was first given to the public as a serial in the “Atlantic Monthly,” and James Russell Lowell said of it: “We do not believe that there is any one who, by birth, breeding, and natural capacity, has had the opportunity to know New England so well as she, or who has the peculiar genius so to profit by the knowledge. Already there have been scenes in the ‘Minister's Wooing’ that, in their lowness of tone and quiet truth, contrast as charmingly with the timid vagueness of the modern school of novel-writers as the ‘Vicar of Wakefield’ itself; and we are greatly mistaken if it do not prove to lie the most characteristic of Mrs. Stowe's works, and that on which her fame will chiefly rest with posterity.” Mrs. Stowe received letters containing similar expressions of commendation from William E. Gladstone, Charles Kingsley, and Bishop Whately.

In 1864 Prof. Stowe resigned his professorship at Andover and removed to Hartford, Conn., where the family continued to reside, making their winter home in Mandarin, Fla., until Prof. Stowe's increasing infirmities made the journey no longer possible. In 1869 Mrs. Stowe published “Old-Town Folks,” a tale of New England life based on her husband's childhood memories of life with his Bigelow cousins in Natick, and in September of the same year, moved thereto by reading the Countess Guiccioli's “Recollections of Lord Byron,” contributed a paper to the “Atlantic Monthly” on “The True Story of Lady Byron's Life.” In reply to the tempest of adverse criticism that this paper evoked, she published “Lady Byron vindicated: a History of the Byron Controversy” (Boston, 1869). Her seventieth birthday was celebrated with a garden party, mainly of literary people, in Cambridge, Mass. She spent the summer of 1888, in failing health, at North Haven, Long Island. George Sand has paid the following tribute to the genius of Mrs. Stowe: “I cannot say she has talent as one understands it in the world of letters, but she has genius as humanity feels the need of genius the genius of goodness, not that of the man of letters, but of the saint. . . . Pure, penetrating, and profound, the spirit that thus fathoms the recesses of the human soul.” The accompanying steel engraving represents Mrs. Stowe as she appeared in middle life; the vignette, at threescore and ten.

Besides the works that have been mentioned, Mrs. Stowe had written “Geography for my Children” (Boston, 1855); “Our Charley, and what to do with him” (1858); “The Pearl of Orr's Island; a Story of the Coast of Maine” (1862); “Agnes of Sorrento” (1862); “Reply on Behalf of the Women of America to the Christian Address of many Thousand Women of Great Britain” (1863); “The Ravages of a Carpet” (1864); “House and Home Papers, by Christopher Crowfield” (1864); “Religious Poems” (1865); “Stories about our Dogs” (1865); “Little Foxes” (1865); “Queer Little People” (1867): “Daisy's First Winter, and other Stories” (1867); “The Chimney Corner, by Christopher Crowfield” (1868); “Men of our Times” (Hartford, 1868); “The American Woman's Home,” with her sister Catherine (Philadelphia, 1869); “Little Pussy Willow” (Boston, 1870); “Pink and White Tyranny” (1871); “Sam Lawson's Fireside Stories” (1871); “My Wife and I” (1872); “Palmetto Leaves” (1873); “Betty's Bright Idea, and other Tales” (1875); “We and Our Neighbors” (1875); “Footsteps of the Master” (1876); “Bible Heroines” (1878); “Poganuc People” (1878); and “A Dog's Mission” (1881). Most of these works have been republished abroad. There is also a selection from her writings entitled “Golden Fruit in Silver Baskets” (London, 1859). In 1868 she became co-editor with Donald G. Mitchell of “Hearth and Home” in New York. Her life has been written by her son, the Rev. Charles Edward Stowe, who is pastor of Windsor avenue Congregational church in Hartford (Boston, 1890).


STOWELL, Charles Henry, microscopist, b. in Perry, N. Y.. 27 Oct., 1850. He was graduated at the medical department of the University of Michigan in 1872, and has since been connected with that institution as instructor, and later as professor of histology and microscopy. Dr. Stowell is a member of scientific societies, and edited for six years "The Microscope," a monthly journal, published in Ann Arbor. He has published "Stu-