Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Reflects on Stowe's Bicentennial

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 200th anniversary — the bicentennial of her birth — is today and the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford is celebrating with a 24-hour reading of her most famous book, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Professor Joan D. Hedrick of Middletown, who wrote the definitive Stowe biography, which won her the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for Biography, “Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life” and “The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader,” said that Stowe will always be remembered for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

Hedrick started writing the biography in 1982 and finished in 1993. It was published in 1994 and won a Pulitzer in 1995.

“I’m attracted to writers who don’t have a lot written on them,” Hedrick said. “I’m attracted to writers who were popular in their time because that means they had a big influence on their time. I was initially attracted to [Stowe] because her reputation in the 19th century was so high. She was just central to the literary culture of the 19th century, but very marginal to that of the 20th century.”

When Hedrick started writing the biography, there hadn’t been a Stowe biography written in more than 50 years, Hedrick said.

“My goal was to put her on the literary map in a way where she hadn’t been," Hedrick said.

Before Hedrick started writing, she had one question, “Why was she so important in her time?” The answer was that Stowe was writing in a time before literature was professionalized and women had better access to it, because there weren’t a lot of barriers, Hedrick said.

Once it became a profession, there were male editors and reviewers, who were acting as gatekeepers, and made it harder for women, Hedrick said. Stowe’s type of writing became “devalued,” she said.

Stowe continues to be seen as someone who speaks for human rights, as human rights’ programs and human rights has gotten more prominence in the last 15 years, Hedrick said.

“I think she is seen in that context, which brings her into view,” Hedrick said.

An important aspect of any subject that Hedrick writes about is if the person is a good letter writer, she said. She wants those letters to be engaging and be written in interesting ways.

“It’s a good indication that I want to spend the time with that person,” Hedrick said.

Besides writing letters to her family, Stowe wrote letters to George Eliot, a British novelist, Hedrick said.

Stowe received correspondence from many distinguished people including Charles Dickens after “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published, Hedrick said. 

She chose important pieces of Stowe’s writing for the reader, Hedrick said. These were pieces she wanted people to have access too, she said.  She went back and forth between the good writing and making a structure out of them.

“I think that is the way writing works for me,” Hedrick said. “It’s kind of back and forth between what the really good evidence is and what this is about.”

Hedrick finds pleasure in writing biographies because there is a narrative to it.

“It is writing a story, but the plot is given to you,” Hedrick said. “All the details is given to you. It was really fun to figure out how [to] tell the story.”

Hedrick has written articles about Stowe and introductions to some of Stowe’s works. She doesn’t plan on writing anymore books about her.

“I don’t feel I write on her again, I feel I have had my say about her,” Hedrick said.

Last Thursday, authors Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn were awarded the first Stowe prize, a human’s right prize for a piece of writing that deals with human rights, Hedrick said. Kristof and WuDunn won the prize for their novel, “Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide.” The novel is about the trafficking of women, kidnapping of young girls and taking them to brothels and keeping them prisoners there and making lots of money off of them, Hedrick said.

“[The authors] think this issue is another type of slavery, Hedrick said. “This treatment of women is the largest human rights problem of the 21st century. It’s very like the slavery Stowe wrote about.”

Check out http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/ for all the different programs and events celebrating Stowe’s 200th anniversary, which started at the beginning of June.

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