Stowe, Harriet Elizabeth Beecher 1811 1896 en 3 21015 Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896) was an American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain. It made the political issues of the 1850's regarding slavery tangible to millions, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North. It angered and embittered the South. The impact is summed up in a commonly quoted statement apocryphally attributed to Abraham Lincoln. When he met Stowe, it is claimed that he said, "So you're the little woman that started this great war!" Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811, the seventh child of Protestant preacher, Lyman Beecher, whose children would later include the famed abolitionist theologian, Henry Ward Beecher. Harriet worked as a teacher with her older sister Catharine: her earliest publication was a geography for children, issued under her sister's name in 1833. In 1836, Harriet married Calvin Stowe, a clergyman and widower. Later she and her husband moved to Brunswick, Maine when he obtained an academic position at Bowdoin College. Harriet and Calvin had seven children, but some died in early childhood. Her first children, twin girls Hattie and Eliza, were born on September 29, 1836. Four years later, in 1840, her son Frederick William was born. In 1848 the birth of Samuel Charles occurred, but in the following year, he died from a cholera epidemic. Stowe helped to support her family financially by writing for local and religious periodicals. During her life, she wrote poems, travel books, biographical sketches, and children's books, as well as adult novels. She met and corresponded with people as varied as Lady Byron, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and George Eliot. While she wrote at least ten adult novels, Harriet Beecher Stowe is predominantly known for her first, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Begun as a serial for the Washington anti-slavery weekly, the National Era, it focused public interest on the issue of slavery, and was deeply controversial. In writing the book, Stowe drew on her personal experience: she was familiar with slavery, the antislavery movement, and the underground railroad because Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio, where Stowe had lived, was a slave state. Following publication of the book, she became a celebrity, speaking against slavery both in America and Europe. She wrote A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853) extensively documenting the realities on which the book was based, to refute critics who tried to argue that it was inauthentic; and published a second anti-slavery novel, Dred in1856. Campaigners for other social changes, such as Caroline Norton, respected and drew upon her work. The historical significance of Stowe's antislavery writing has tended to draw attention away from her other work, and from her work's literary significance. Her work is admittedly uneven. At its worst, it indulges in a romanticized Christian sensibility that was much in favour with the audience of her time, but that finds little sympathy or credibility with modern readers. At her best, Stowe was an early and effective realist. Her settings are often accurately and detailedly described. Her portraits of local social life, particularly with minor characters, reflect an awareness of the complexity of the culture she lived in, and an ability to communicate that culture to others. In her commitment to realism, and her serious narrative use of local dialect, Stowe predated works like Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn by 30 years, and influenced later regionalist writers including Sarah Orne Jewett and Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman. Source: Wikipedia Morris, William 1834 1896 en 5 7633 William Morris (24 March 1834–3 October 1896) was an English artist, writer, and socialist. He was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and one of the principal founders of the British Arts and Crafts movement, a pioneer of the socialist movement in Britain, and a writer of poetry and fiction. He is perhaps best known as a designer of wallpaper and patterned fabrics. Source: Wikipedia du Maurier, George 1834 1896 en 1 1307 George Louis Palmella Busson du Maurier (6 March 1834 – 8 October 1896) was a French-born British author and cartoonist. He studied art in Paris, and moved to Antwerp, Belgium, where he lost vision in his left eye. He consulted an oculist in Düsseldorf, Germany, where he met his future wife, Emma Wightwick. He followed her family to London, where he married Emma in 1863. He became a member of the staff of the satirical magazine Punch in 1865, drawing two cartoons a week. His most famous cartoon, "True Humility", was the origin of the expressions "good in parts" and "a curate's egg". (In the original caption, a bishop addresses a curate [a very humble class of clergyman] whom he has condescended to invite to breakfast: 'I'm afraid you've got a bad egg, Mr. Jones.' The curate deprecatingly replies, 'Oh no, my Lord, I assure you - parts of it are excellent!') In an earlier (1884) cartoon, du Maurier had coined the expression 'bedside manner'. Owing to his deteriorating eyesight, du Maurier reduced his involvement with Punch in 1891 and settled in Hampstead, where he wrote three novels (the last was published posthumously). His second novel Trilby, published in 1894 fits into the gothic horror genre which was undergoing a revival during the fin de siecle. The story of the poor artist's model Trilby O'Ferrall, transformed into a diva under the spell of the evil musical genius Svengali, created a sensation. Soap, songs, dances, toothpaste, and a town in Florida were all named for the heroine, and a variety of soft felt hat with an indented crown (worn in the London stage production of a dramatization of the novel) came to be called a trilby. The plot inspired Gaston Leroux's 1910 potboiler Phantom of the Opera and the innumerable works derived from it. Although initially bemused by Trilby's success, du Maurier eventually came to despise the persistent attention given to his novel. A notable cartoon George du Maurier made, was a cartoon of a television/videophone conversation in 1879, the telephonoscope. George du Maurier was a close friend of Henry James, the novelist; their relationship was fictionalised in David Lodge's Author, Author. George du Maurier was the father of actor Gerald du Maurier and grandfather of the writers Angela du Maurier and Dame Daphne du Maurier. He was also the father of Sylvia Llewelyn Davies and thus grandfather of the five boys who inspired Peter Pan. He was interred in Saint John's Churchyard in Hampstead parish in London.