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1Uncle Tom's Cabin

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Among the most “banned” books in the United States, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is a novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe which treats slavery as a central theme. Stowe was a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist. The novel is believed to have had a profound effect on the North’s view of slavery. In fact, when he met Harriet Beecher Stowe, President Lincoln is said to have commented, “So you’re the little lady whose book started the Civil War.” First published on March 20, 1852, the story focuses on the tale of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave, the central character around whose life the other characters—both fellow slaves and slave owners—revolve. The novel depicts the harsh reality of slavery while also showing that Christian love and faith can overcome even something as evil as enslavement of fellow human beings. (summary by Wikipedia and John Greenman)<br /><br /> <b>Note From the Reader: </b> The listener is about to enter a world rich with diverse characters. In order to differentiate between the characters, the reader has given each, his/her own voice. As an adult male reader, however, the reader's representation of women and children will, necessarily be less than adequate. He asks for your indulgence.

2Negerhut

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Het boek vertelt over de lotgevallen van een aantal slaven in en om een plantage in de Amerikaanse staat Kentucky. Onder hen zijn Eliza en vooral Oom Tom, slaven van de vriendelijke plantagebezitter Shelbey. Het verhaal begint op het moment dat hun leven ruw verstoord wordt door de financiële situatie van Shelbey, die zich gedwongen ziet Oom Tom en Eliza's zoontje te verkopen. Het boek beschrijft de poging van Eliza om met haar zoontje te vluchten. Intussen vlucht Eliza's man George ook - hij is slaaf van een andere eigenaar en wordt door zijn meester mishandeld. Oom Tom verzet zich niet tegen de verkoop. Hij wordt de Mississippi af gescheept, in de richting van de gevreesde katoenplantages en komt uiteindelijk in handen van de bullebak Simon Legree. (Samenvatting van Wikipedia)

3Pearl of Orr's Island

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Go on a journey to the coast of Maine and immerse yourself in the picturesque community on Orr’s Island. See the raindrops glistening on the pine needles and hear the waves crashing on the rocks. This is a tale of romance, tragedy, crusty sea captains, an impetuous boy, a loving girl, complete with village gossips and twists in the plot. (Summary by Bridget Gaige)

Der Roman schildert das Schicksal einer Reihe afroamerikanischer Sklaven und ihrer jeweiligen Besitzer in den vierziger Jahren des 19. Jahrhunderts in den Vereinigten Staaten von Amerika.<br><br /> Die Titelfigur Onkel Tom ist ein Sklave in Kentucky. Sein Besitzer Mr. Shelby behandelt ihn gut, ist aber stark verschuldet. Tom ist Verwalter der Farm, bekennender Christ und leitet regelmäßig die Gottesdienste der Sklaven. Aber als Tom aus Finanznot verkauft werden muss, wird er von seiner Frau und seinen Kindern getrennt.<br><br /> Sein zweiter Herr, St. Claire, ist ein gutmütiger, nachsichtiger Lebemann, der Tom die Freilassung verspricht. Seine Tochter Eva entwickelt ein inniges Freundschaftsverhältnis zu Tom, wird aber todkrank. Wieder landet Tom beim Sklavenmarkt und hat diesmal weniger Glück. So gelangt er an Mr. Legree, der mit äußerster Brutalität eine Baumwollplantage betreibt ... <br><br /> Parallel wird die Geschichte von Eliza erzählt, deren kleiner Sohn Harry verkauft werden soll ... sie fliehen und liefern sich ein Katz und Maus-Spiel mit den Häschern. Das Ziel: Kanada, in dem angeblich die Freiheit winkt ... (Zusammenfassung von Wikipedia und crowwings)

This is a deeply moving novel centered around the lives of Uncle Tom and others and which very effectively portrays the suffering caused by the practice of slavery in the American South, prior to and during the time of the Civil War. <br><br>It also provides a fascinating character study of a wide variety of people, including various slave owners, families of slave owners, traders, bystanders, the slaves themselves, and participants in the underground railroad. On one hand there is the ignorance, false mindsets, indifference and even blatant cruelty and abuse on the part of some, and on the other hand there is great love and compassion and sacrifice on the part of others. This was the best-selling novel of the 19th Century and is said to have helped fuel the cause of the abolitionists. (Summary by Larraine Paquette and Wikipedia)

6Queer Little Folks

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

A wonderful children's classic - a collection of moral stories told by animals in the woods. The wittily written stories explore various issues in a fun way. - Summary by Claire Schreuder

7Eliza Crossing the River

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

LibriVox volunteers bring you 9 recordings of <em>Eliza Crossing the River</em> by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This was the Fortnightly Poetry project for April 27th, 2014.<br /><br />Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author. Her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) was a depiction of life for African Americans under slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential in the United States and United Kingdom. It energized anti-slavery forces in the American North, while provoking widespread anger in the South. She wrote more than 20 books, including novels, three travel memoirs, and collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her writings and her public stands on social issues of the day. (Summary from Wikipedia)

LibriVox volunteers bring you ten readings of Still, Still, with Thee by Harriet Beecher Stowe. This hymn written by the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin was the weekly poem for December 14 - 21, 2014. - Summary by Rachel

9Religious Studies, Sketches and Poems

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Best known for having written "Uncle Tom's Cabin," Harriet Beecher Stowe also wrote several religious works, including the works in this book. The first section (Religious Studies) was originally published as "Footsteps of the Master," and was included in this compilation along with a selection of works from her book "The May Flower." The poetry included was published at irregular intervals and have been included in this compilation as well as others. (Summary by KHand is a paraphrase of the Introductory Note)

A sequel to Oldtown Folks, featuring some of the same characters, these are 15 charming short stories told by ole' Sam Lawson to entertain Horace and Bill, two impressionable, curious and clever young boys of Oldtown (a fictional 1850's New England village), during evenings gathered around the hearth, or roaming with Sam around the countryside. Stowe faithfully and masterfully captures many of the colloquial expressions, superstitions, beliefs, customs and habits of the period that have almost completely faded from modern American culture, as well as conveying many truths about the human condition that haven't changed a bit. ~ Summary by soloist Michele Fry

1870's rural Massachusetts communities became famous as “Oldtown” in Harriet Beecher Stowe's 7th novel and national bestseller. Based partially on her husband Rev. Calvin Stowe's childhood memories and other old timers' recollections, this story of growing up in rural New England just after the American Revolution is one of the earliest examples of local color writing in New England. Young Horace Holyoke, the novel's narrator, describes life during the early Federalist years, capturing its many rich ideas, customs, and family lore. Villagers wrestle with loyalties to the fledgling government, and with the new secular rationalism provoked by the young nation’s Founders. Clashes between Puritanism, Calvinism, and Arminianism abound. This book helped with the depreciation of Calvinism in that time. Summary by Michele Fry

12Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Compiled from her Letters and Journals

By Charles Edward Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896), of Cincinnati, was the most famous female American author of her age, and is said to have touched off the American Civil War with her novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), awakening the whole world to the harsh conditions of slavery. She wrote 30 other successful books depicting life in early America, plus collections of well written articles and travellogues, poems, hymns, and speeches on social issues. Harriet's father and all 7 of her brothers were ministers, her 5 sisters teachers and/or social activists, a whole family concerned with improving society. Her father was the outspoken Calvinist preacher Lyman Beecher, a Calvinist minister who became one of the best-known evangelists of his age. Her younger brother, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, was one of the most famous orators of his day and with Harriet, was very active in the Underground Railroad, for which both were savagely attacked by the slave holding aristocracy. After the War, Harriet and her husband Calvin Stowe, a theology professor, and Henry all moved to north-east Florida to establish schools and churches to help educate the free negros who had fled there. In this book we see, through colorful letters written to family, friends, and other famous personages throughout her life, a very intimate portrait of a brilliantly emotional girl's inner life, a wife and mother's struggle raising 7 children at near poverty, her rise to fame and fortune, her and family's travels through Europe where they were feted by royalty, her depiction of the devastating sadness at losing 3 of her children early in their lives, her tortuous musings as to why God allows suffering, slavery and injustice, and her eventual reconciliation with God's grace and her ultimate devotion to Christ. - Summary by Michele Fry, Soloist.

13Minister's Wooing

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe is today best known for her classic novel <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>. However, that book was certainly not her only remarkable anti-slavery work. In <i>The Minister's Wooing</i>, Stowe takes the reader into 18th century New England, and uses that setting to explore themes of slavery and religion as the background to a domestic story. Mary, the heroine of this story, is a woman between several candidates for matrimony. The man she truly loved is lost at sea, and so she finally decides to marry a minister whom she does not love. Will there be a happy end? - Summary by Carolin

14Palmetto Leaves

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

After the Civil War, Harriet and her husband Charles bought an Orange Plantation in Mandarin, on the upper east coast of Florida, where they lived during the winter months. Over the years they expanded their cottage to accommodate many guests (now a museum open to the public). They opened schools to educate and churches to care for the recently freed negros pouring into Florida seeking refuge and opportunity. These charming essays, each describing a largely undeveloped rural land, became one of the first travel guides written about Florida and stimulated the first boom of tourism and residential development to that area. Stow describes its waterways, flora and fauna, the generosity of the people, the lush abundance of flowers, farmer's efforts to develop crops, Negro relations with whites, correspondence with famous persons, etc. - Summary by Michele Fry

15May Flower and Miscellaneous Writings

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

Included herein are 35 charming short stories or humorous sketches, some written as exercises for the literary Semi-Colon Club of Cincinnati which Stowe belonged to for years, others published in magazines of the time, and 7 religious poems. Stowe honed her expressive skills on many of these before writing her first serious novel, <i>Uncle Tom's Cabin</i>, and 30 other books that followed. They showcase her considerable skill even as a young writer, and she made good money doing it, often supporting her family. This collection, named after a flower native to the east coast, likely the Anemone hepatica, or 'May flower', should not to be confused with another collection by Stowe, <i>The Mayflower</i>, which provides sketches of several descendants of the Pilgrims. - Summary by Michele Fry

16Lady Byron Vindicated

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

In 1869, the Atlantic published Stowe's article, The True Story Of Lady Byron's Life, a brief exposé of the famous poet Lord Byron's sordid private life which had led to a separation from his wife and drove him out of England, as told to her by Lady Byron herself before her death. Stowe wrote this article long after Lady Byron's death, when Lady Byron‘s impeccable reputation was being smeared across Europe by Byron's influential literary friends, and her trustees were doing nothing to defend her. Criticism against the article raged in the American and European press and damaged the Atlantic's circulation, but Stowe remained confident, and the following year, she expanded her article into this full-length exposé. Sprinkled throughout with Byron's biting poetry, Lady Byron's and other notable correspondence, and Stowe's outrage at the way women were belittled and treated as property during the Victorian period, the invectives in this book are, even by modern standards, intense! (Summary by Michele Fry, Soloist)

17Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

After the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which many claim sparked off the Civil War that put an end to legalized slavery in America, there was a great outcry that Stowe had blown her fictional story out of all proportion to the facts. She was viewed by some as an irresponsible monster. Stowe defended herself by painstakingly publishing this Key, describing the actual people, incidents, statutes, court cases, news articles, advertisements, and published facts from whence she drew her material. She didn’t make anything up! Additionally, throughout this key, Stowe vents her own very strong opinions on the shameful practice of slavery, and examines, especially in Part IV, the failure of organized Christendom in both America and Europe to put a stop to the barbarity. "We must repudiate, with determined severity, the blasphemous doctrine of property in human beings." She and her famous brother, Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, were very active in the Underground Railroad, raising money and endangering themselves to save countless lives. - Summary by Michele Fry

18Dred, A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

This is Stowe's second book, another one depicting the horrors of southern slavery, published 4 years after Uncle Tom's Cabin and 5 years before the commencement of the Civil War, when new territories wanting admittance into the US (Texas, Oklahoma, name the states), were vying to become slave states, threatening to spread the heinous system. While a work of fiction, the book successfully documents the horrors of the slave system, and depicts how some slaves escaped into the Dismal Swamp (a real place spreading over a million acres in southeastern Virginia and northeastern North Carolina), where they often lived for years hiding from their pursuers, often in community. Dred, one of Stowe's most unusual heroic characters, proclaims his mission as follows: ". . .the burden of the Lord is upon me . . . to show unto this people their iniquity, and be a sign unto this evil nation!'" The book depicts that slaves were not all passive victims, as so often portrayed, and had many white sympathizers, but all were caught in the grips of a legal system so stacked against them that nobody could overturn it without threats to life and limb. The book was welcomed by the anti-slavery movement in Europe as well as in America, and helped move the needle of sympathy to finally overthrowing the system. - Summary by Michele Fry

Stowe wrote over 30 books. This one is a fascinating collection of her post Civil War musings on a variety of cultural topics, staged mostly as conversations between Christopher Crowfield (Stowe's masculine nome de plume), and his wife, their son Ben, daughter Jenny, their friends, and various neighbors who drop in to chat around the fireside. Lively topics include women's suffrage & their education, entertainment, fashion, the economy during reconstruction, youth entertainment, and how society and its institutions should prepare young women for useful, meaningful lives besides getting married or simply depending on other family members to support them while they do little or nothing, or worse, fall into a street life. She reflects on the economic after-effects of the Civil War, and the struggle to create a more civilized nation. ( ~ Michele Fry)

20Salem Witchcraft, the Planchette Mystery, and Modern Spiritualism

By Harriet Beecher Stowe and Samuel Robert Wells

The object in reprinting this most interesting review is simply to show the progress made in moral, intellectual, and physical science. The reader will go back with us to a time—not very remote—when nothing was known of Phrenology and Psychology; when men and women were persecuted, and even put to death, through the baldest ignorance and the most pitiable superstition. If we were to go back still farther, to the Holy Wars, we should find cities and nations drenched in human blood through religious bigotry and intolerance. Let us thank God that our lot is cast in a more fortunate age, when the light of revelation, rightly interpreted by the aid of Science, points to the Source of all knowledge, all truth, all light. <br><br> When we know more of Anatomy, Physiology, Physiognomy, and the Natural Sciences generally, there will be a spirit of broader liberality, religious tolerance, and individual freedom. Then all men will hold themselves accountable to God, rather than to popes, priests, or parsons. Our progenitors lived in a time that tried men’s souls, as the following lucid review most painfully shows. (Summary by Samuel Robert Wells)

21Woman in Sacred History

By Harriet Beecher Stowe

A series of sketches of 19 women in the Bible, drawn from scriptural, historical and legendary sources. Separated into 3 divisions: Women of the Patriarchal Ages (Sarah, Hagar, Rebekah, Leah & Rachel); Women of the National Period (Miriam, Deborah, Delilah, Jepthah's daughter, Hannah, Ruth, the witch of Endor, Esther & Judith) and Women of the Christian Era (the mythical Madonna, Mary, the daughter of Herodias, the woman of Samaria, Mary Magdalene & Martha and Mary). - Summary by Ron Altman