PREFACE
Thanks are very heartily due to Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin and Company, the publishers of the works of Mrs. Stowe, for their kind permission to quote freely from her books, and from the biographies of Mrs. Stowe written by her son, Rev. Charles E. Stowe, and by her grandson, Mr. Lyman Beecher Stowe. The same publishers have given permission to make an abstract of “Cleon,” the play by Harriet Beecher, which is found in the “Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe” by Annie Fields, of which they are the publishers. Messrs. Harper and Brothers have also been good enough to allow quotation from the “Autobiography and Correspondence of Lyman Beecher.” To Miss E. N. Vanderpoel, the compiler of “Chronicles of a Pioneer School,” the author wishes to acknowledge her indebtedness for some interesting passages.
The author has also greatly appreciated the permission given by Mr. John R. Howard to quote a short passage about childhood experiences in the Beecher home found in his valuable sketch of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher.
To Mr. Charles E. Stowe, the author hereby makes grateful acknowledgment for much helpful advice, and for material not hitherto published. From many friends in Litchfield, Guilford, Hartford and elsewhere, the writer of this book has received invaluable help and would be glad to acknowledge each one’s contribution if there were space to do so. The frontispiece is made from an old carte de visite kindly lent by Mrs. Hannah C. Partridge, of Hartford, Connecticut.
Without these bountiful sources of information and these privileges so graciously allowed, a book of this kind could, of course, not have been written. Where-ever possible the language of Mrs. Stowe herself has been quoted or adapted from the rich treasury of her correspondence and autobiographical writings, or from stories of her own. Among these the “Lyman Beecher Autobiography” fixes forever a composite portrait of the Beecher family and is an almost inexhaustible storehouse of material. Among Mrs. Stowe’s books, the childhood experiences of Tina in “Oldtown Folks” and of Dolly in “Poganuc People” have been a veritable panorama of the young life of Harriet herself. Indeed, so largely do her books reflect not only her ideas and emotions but even the objective incidents of her life, that many of them are almost autobiographic in their character.