Local Attractions and Businesses in Cromwell, Connecticut - Comfort Inn

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut is based around an 1871 cottage-style house. It offers visitors a glimpse into the fascinating life of the famous feminist, anti-slavery crusader and author of Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Stowe spent the last 25 years of her life in this house (the design of which embodies the reforms in housekeeping that she advocated) and incorporated all the newest conveniences of her inventive era. Stowe, like many of her contemporaries, pursued social reform on a broad front, including the rights of women, so her interest in changing the design of houses to ease housekeeping comes as no surprise.

Her great fame derived, however, from the fundamental role which her 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin played in changing popular sentiment toward slavery in the decade leading up to the American Civil War. She succeeded in showing the evils of slavery by adhering to the sentimental conventions of Victorian fiction, focusing on the devastating effects of the slave system on family life.

The book's runaway success made her a hero to abolitionists and a demon for the Slave South. Indeed, a free black man in Maryland, suspected of helping to smuggle slaves to freedom, was imprisoned for owning a copy of the book and a map of Canada.

In addition to the house, the Stowe Center includes the Stowe-Day library, a research facility housing Stowe's papers and related items of literary and historical interest.