This daughter of a Calvinist preacher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, and brought up in Puritanism. Her inspiration is blended with romanticism and religiously rationalized justice. Her first book, The Mayflower, was published in 1843.

It was in Cincinnati, after she had married in 1836 Calvin E. Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary, that Harriet Elisabeth Beecher, alias Harriet Beecher Stowe, met her first fugitive slaves.

She learned about the life in the South from her own visits there, which alltogether brought her to write her famous novel.