In Cincinnati, separated only by the Ohio River from a slaveholding community, she came in contact with fugitive slaves and learned about southern life from friends and from her own visits. These experiences prompted her to write Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), published serially in the antislavery paper National Era. She reinforced her story with The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), in which she accumulated a large number of documents and testimonies against slavery.

In 1853, on a journey to Europe, she was lionized in England. Much later, British public opinion would turn against her with publication of the article

Works by Harriet Beecher Stowe The Mayflower (1843) Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856) The Minister's Wooing (1859) The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862) Byron painted by his compeers; or, All about Lord Byron, from his marriage to his death, as given in the various newspapers of his day, shewing wherein the American novelist gives a truthful account, and wherein she draws on her own morbid imagination (1869) Oldtown Folks (1869) The New Housekeeper's Manual with Catherine E. Beecher (1873)

The True Story of Lord Byron's Life (1869), alleging an incestuous love affair between the poet and his half sister. In the novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), she depicted the deterioration of a society resting on a slave basis. When the Atlantic Monthly was established the next year, she found a ready vehicle for her writings, which she also published in two of her brother's papers, the Independent of New York and the Christian Union. She thereafter led the life of a woman of letters, writing novels, of which The Minister's Wooing (1859) is best known, and many studies of social life in both fiction and essay.

Web sites about Harriet Beecher Stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe from Women in History