Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an abolitionist and once the most well-known novelist in the United States. She lived with her husband in Brunswick, Maine, when the Fugitive Slave Act was passed in 1850. They became part of the Underground Railroad, hosting people who were escaping from slavery to Canada.

From 1851-1852, Stowe published her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin in serialized installments. The book became so popular that it is credited with starting the Civil War.

While Uncle Tom’s Cabin is by far her most famous work, Stowe also wrote novels and short stories about New England and Maine, which scholars of American literary regionalism see as the foundational texts of the movement.