Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life

Rating:
Summary: A disrespectul, voluminous account of an amazing woman
Review: This biography was exhausting to read. The author painted a bleak, even disrespectul picture of this truly unique woman. There must be a better biography of this great woman! This book is not worth the time it takes to read it, which is a considerable amount given its enormous size! I do not recommend this biography in the least. Very disappointed with the author's approach to her subject.

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommend
Review: This is an excellent scholarly biography of Stowe, wonderfully researched and clearly written. Hedrick quotes generously from Stowe's letters, so the reader gets a feel for her voice and those of her family members. She puts Stowe's life in context beautifully, so besides being a great biography, it's also an excellent source on 19th-century millenialist, abolition, and suffrage movements and on the case of women writers & canon formation. Anyone who has read and liked Mary Kelly's Private Woman, Public Stage will like this book, too.
My only complaint is that the end rushes in -- Hedrick covers something like 14 years in the last chapter. Granted much of this time Stowe seemed to be developing Alzheimer's, but I would have liked a bit more detail. What was she doing in her lucid periods? What was her feminist sister Isabella doing and how did Stowe's youngest ne'er-do-well son go from a ship's boy to a Harvard student? These are quibbles, though. In fact, one of the things I most like about this book is that Hedrick doesn't supply information when there isn't any to be found. There's very little speculation here, no inappropriately imagined scenes, no "Stowe must have thought" or "Stowe must have done." For Hedrick, either it happened or it didnt; she knows the difference between a biography and a novel.

Rating:
Summary: Informative, but it could have been so much better written
Review: While, this book was informative, it was a chore to read. While chronological, it seemed disjointed and was difficult to finish. I couldn't believe this book won some sort of award and only slogged through it because it was a gift from someone who met the author at a wedding.