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Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, her father the eminent minister
Lyman Beecher, Stowe grew up in an orthodox Calvinist family.
She attended Sarah Pierce's girls' academy, one of the first
institutions to educate young women, and later taught at a
school founded by two of her sisters. She became a supporter
of abolitionism after hearing her brothers' sermons against
the Fugitive Slave Act, reading antislavery literature, and
losing her infant son, whose death inspired her deep sympathy
for slave mothers whose children were sold. Understanding
that forging emotional links between people is an effective
strategy for achieving social change, in Uncle Tom's Cabin
(1852) Stowe attempted to engage her readers' hearts by depicting
the suffering and oppression slaves endured. The novel was
enormously popular, selling 350,000 copies during the first
year and prompting some thirty anti-Uncle Tom novels in reaction.
Stowe's other works include the nonfiction A Key to Uncle
Tom's Cabin (1853), which provided case histories to
document the novel; Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp
(1856), and regional writing such as Oldtown Folks
(1869).
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