Harriet Beecher Stowe
In order to support her family, in 1838 Harriet Beecher Stowe began writing for magazines such as the Western Monthly Magazine, Godey’s Ladies Book, and New-York Evangelist. In time, she earned enough money to hire domestic help so that she could write for a few uninterrupted hours a day. Stowe became a professional writer in 1842 when she negotiated a contract with Harper Brothers. Angry about the Fugitive Slave Act and probably inspired by the publication in 1849 of the slave narrative The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself, Stowe wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1851.
Josiah Henson (1789-1883) was a slave who in 1830 escaped to Ontario, Canada, where he established a settlement and a school for other escaped slaves. Henson also founded a colony near Lake Erie where escaped slaves could grow their own crops. Henson dictated his narrative to Samuel A. Eliot, former mayor of Boston, who wrote the manuscript from Henson’s oral account.
Stowe’s second novel about slavery is concerned with how the Southern legal system supported and perpetuated the evil practice. While Uncle Tom’s Cabin succeeded in creating an antislavery sentiment in the North, Dred, with its negative view of Southern lawsdid nothing to help the abolitionist cause in the South.
Stowe informs her publisher of the progress on Dred: A Tale of the Dismal Swamp and asks that he send her some wine to help her through writing the final pages:
I am coming so near to the near now that I can see some things with certainty… I cannot calculate on producing more than 20 pages of manuscript a day… I should like half a dozen more bottles of Catawba to support the hot weather & the long pull…
A month later, Stowe writes again to Mr. Phillips, her publisher, with her news. It appears the Catawba worked:
Io triumphe – It’s done! – and I send it. You may have it published as soon as you please… I hardly thought I should do it – but it’s done – and it suits me and I hope it will suit you.