Harriet Beecher Stowe

American, 1811–1896

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was an American author and abolitionist whose novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) galvanized opposition to slavery in the United States and around the world. The daughter and sister of prominent clergymen, Stowe channeled her moral convictions into fiction that reached millions. Her novel became the best-selling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible and is credited with helping to lay the groundwork for the Civil War.