The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader / Edition 1

by Joan D. Hedrick

Overview

While best known for the immensely popular and controversial novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe is also the author of an extensive body of additional work on American culture and politics. Playing many roles—journalist, pamphleteer, novelist, preacher, and advisor on domestic affairs—Stowe used the written word as a vehicle for religious, social, and political commentaries, often leavening them with entertainment in order to reach a broad audience. She had a profound effect on American culture, not because her ideas were unique, but because they were common. What made her so radical was that she insisted on putting her ideas into action.
The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader offers a focused collection of Stowe's writings from the 1830s through the 1860s. Illustrating her broad range, rhetorical strategies, and cultural designs on the world, it is ideal for courses in nineteenth-century American literature, women's literature, and American history. The volume collects those selections best suited for classroom use, reprinting many pieces here for the first time. Editor Joan D. Hedrick provides a substantial introduction that assesses Stowe's vital impact on nineteenth-century American literature, politics, and culture. The readings are divided into three sections: Early Sketches, Antislavery Writings, and Domestic Culture and Politics. Early Sketches presents the finest writing of Stowe's literary apprenticeship. Antislavery Writings includes Uncle Tom's Cabin in its entirety, placing it in the context of Stowe's considerable and often-overlooked body of other antislavery writings. This section also includes a generous selection from A Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin, a companion volume to the novel. Domestic Culture and Politics shows the scope of Stowe's thinking on the Victorian home, for which she was a major propagandist. The inclusion here of "The True Story of Lady Byron's Life," an exposé of male debauchery and incest at the core of a nineteenth-century home, represents Stowe's willingness to tackle the most challenging political and social issues of her time.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195091175
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	10/08/1998
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	580
Product dimensions:	9.27(w) x 6.15(h) x 1.05(d)
Lexile:	1180L (what's this?)

About the Author

Trinity College, Connecticut

Table of Contents

A Note on the TextAcknowledgmentsChronologyIntroductionI. Early Essays and Sketches1.. "Modern Uses of Language" (1833)2.. "Uncle Enoch" (1835)3.. "The Old Meeting-House: Sketch from the Note-Book of an Old Gentlemen" (1840)4.. "The Canal-Boat" (1841)II. Antislavery Writings1.. To the Editor of the Cincinnati Journal and Luminary (1836)2.. "Uncle Sam's Emancipation: A Sketch" (1845)3.. "The Freeman's Dream: A Parable" (1850)4.. Letters (1851-53)Frederick DouglassCatharine BeecherHenry Ward BeecherGamaliel BaileyThe Reverend Joel ParkerHenry Ward BeecherEliza Cabot FollenWilliam Lloyd Garrison5.. Uncle Tom's Cabin: or, Life among the Lowly (1852)6.. From A Key to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1853)7.. "An Affectionate and Christian Address of Many Thousands of Women of Great Britain and Ireland to Their Sisters the Women of the United States of America" (1852)8.. "An Appeal to Women of the Free States of America, on the Present Crisis on Our Country" (1854)9.. From Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856)10.. "What Is to Be Done With Them?" (1852)11.. "Will You Take a Pilot?" (1862)12.. Playbill from Uncle Tom's Cabin Show (c. 1865)III. Domestic Culture and Politics1.. "Trials of a Housekeeper" (1839)2.. To Sarah Buckingham Beecher (1850)3.. "What Is a Home?" (1864)4.. "Servants" (1864)5.. Selections from Little Foxes (1865)6.. "Home Decoration" (1869)7.. "The True Story of Lady Byron's Life" (1869)Suggestions for Further Reading