*Uncle Tom's Cabin* is arguably the most influential novel ever written by an American. Upon its publication in 1852, the novel's vivid description of slavery polarized its American readership, ultimately widening the rift that led to the Civil War. Its adaptation into plays and films ensured its lasting effect on American culture. But few people today have read the book.
Stowe, an active abolitionist, wrote the sentimental novel to depict the horrors of the "peculiar institution" while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve.
In the United States, *Uncle Tom's Cabin* was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book (after the Bible) of the 19th century. The influence attributed to the book was so great that a story, most likely apocryphal, arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at the start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."
The book and the often simplistic or sensational adaptations it inspired helped to popularize a number of negative stereotypes of African-Americans, including that of the namesake character. These later associations with *Uncle Tom's Cabin* have, to an extent, overshadowed the book's immense historical effects but it remains a landmark in protest literature, with later social justice books such as *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclair and *Silent Spring* by Rachel Carson owing a large debt to it.
Stowe was a member of the remarkable Beecher clan, a political family notable for involvement in religion, civil rights, and social reform. Its members include many prominent clergy, educators, artists, writers, and women's rights advocates. Her brother Henry Ward Beecher was a leading abolitionist and social reformer (and incidentally had many extra-marital affairs and a juicy trial in 1875 for adultery). Her sister Mary's granddaughter was the noted feminist and utopian author Charlotte Perkins Gilman.
In 1868, Stowe became one of the first editors of *Hearth and Home* magazine, one of several new publications appealing to women; she departed after a year. Stowe campaigned for the expansion of married women's rights. Harriet Beecher Stowe died on July 1, 1896, in Hartford CT, 17 days after her 85th birthday. She is buried in the historic cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover MA along with her husband and their son Henry Ellis.

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