Washington Irving

Washington Irving

Washington Irving (1783-1859) - pseudonyms: Dietrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle, Geoffrey Crayon 

Washington Irving (1783-1859) - pseudonyms: Dietrich Knickerbocker, Jonathan Oldstyle, Geoffrey Crayon
American author, short story writer, essayist, poet, travel book writer, biographer, and columnist. Irving has been called the father of the American short story. He is best known for 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,' in which the schoolmaster Ichabold Crane meets with a headless horseman, and 'Rip Van Winkle,' about a man who falls asleep for 20 years.
"I am always at a loss to know how much to believe of my own stories." (from Tales of a Traveler, 1824) Washington Irving was born in New York City as the youngest of 11 children. His father was a wealthy merchant, and his mother, an English woman, was the granddaughter of a clergyman. According to a story, George Washington met Irving, named after him, and gave his blessing. In the years to come Irving would write one of his greatest works, THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON (1855-59).
Early in his life Irving developed a passion for books. He read Robinson Crusoe, Sinbad the Sailor, and The World Displyed (stories about voyages and travels). He studied law privately in the offices of Henry Masterton (1798), Brockholst Livingston (1801), and John Ogde Hoffman (1802), but practiced only briefly. From 1804 to 1806 he travelled widely Europe. He visited Marseilles, Genoa, Sicily, where he saw the famous English naval officer, Nelson, and met Washington Allston, the painter, in Rome. After return to the United States, Irving was admitted to New York bar in 1806. He was a partner with his brothers in the family hardware business, New York and Liverpool, England, and representative of the business in England until it collapsed in 1818. During the war of 1812 Irving was a military aide to New York Governor Tompkins in the U.S. Army. Celebrity.mrzl.com
Irving's career as a writer started in journals and newspapers. He contributed to Morning Chronicle (1802-03), which was edited by his brother Peter, and published Salmagundi (1807-08), writing in collaboration with his brother William and James Kirke Paulding. From 1812 to 1814 he was an editor of Analetic magazine in Philadelphia and New York.
Irving's success in social life and literature was shadowed by a personal tragedy. He was engaged to be married to Matilda Hoffmanm who died at the age of seventeen, in 1809. Later he wrote in a private letter, addressed to Mrs. Forster, as an answer to her inquiry why he had not been married: "For years I could not talk on the subject of this hopeless regret; I could not even mention her name; but her image was continually before me, and I dreamt of her incessantly."
In 1809 appeared Irving's comic history of the Dutch regime in New York, A HISTORY OF NEW YORK, by the imaginary 'Dietrich Knickerbocker', who was supposed to be an eccentric Dutch-American scholar. It was one of the earliest fantasies of history. The name Knickerbocker was later used to identify the first American school of writers, the Knickerbocker Group, of which Irving was a leading figure. The book became part of New York folklore, and eventually the word Knickerbocker was also used to describe any New Yorker who could trace one's family to the original Dutch settlers. Irving's success continued with THE SKETCH BOOK OF GEOFFREY CRAYON, GENT. (1819-20), a collection of stories, which allowed him to become a full-time writer. The stories were heavily influenced by the German folktales. In 1822 appeared a sequel of The Sketch Book, BRACEBRIDGE HALL. Irving invites the reader to ramble gently with him at the Hall, stating that "I am not writing a novel, and have nothing of intricate plot, or marvelous adventure, to promise the reader."
After the death of his mother, Irving decided to stay in Europe, where he remained for seventeen years from 1815 to 1832. He lived in Dresden (1822-23), London (1824) and Paris (1825). In England Irving had a romantic liaison with Mary Shelley. Eventually he settled in Spain, where he worked for financial reasons for the U.S. Embassy in Madrid (1826-29). In 1829-32 Irving was a secretary to the American Legation under Martin Van Buren. During his stay in Spain, he wrote COLUMBUS (1828), CONQUEST OF GRANADA (1829), and THE COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS (1831), all based on careful historical research. In 1829 he moved to London and published ALHAMBRA (1832), concerning the history and the legends of Moorish Spain. Among his literary friends were Mary Shelley and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
In 1832 Irving returned to New York to an enthusiastic welcome as the first American author to have achieved international fame. He toured the southern and western United States and wrote THE CAYON MISCELLANY (1835) and A TOUR OF THE PRAIRIES (1835), an account of a journey, which extended from Fort Gibson, at that time a frontier post of the Far West, to the Cross Timbers in what is now Oklahoma. His fellow-travelers included Henry Leavitt Ellsworth (1791-1858), who also wrote an interesting narrative of the tour, and Charles Joseph Latrobe (1801-1875), whom Irving described as a "man of a thousand occupations; a botanist, a geologist, a hunter of beetles and butterflies, a musical amateur, a sketcher of no mean pretensions, in short, a complete virtuoso".
From 1836 to 1842 Irving lived at Sunnyside manor house, Tarrytown-on-Hudson. When his old friend, Charles Dickens, visited America, he saw also Irving and celebrated their reunion with a speech: "There is in this city a gentleman who, at the reception of one of my books??I well remember it was the Old Curiosity Shop??wrote to me in England a letter so generous, so affectionate, and so manly, that if I had written the book under every circumstance of disappointment, of discouragement, and difficulty, instead of the reverse, I should have found in the receipt of that letter my best and most happy reward. I answered him, and he answered me, and so we kept shaking hands autographically, as if no ocean rolled between us. I came here to this city eager to see him, and [laying his hand upon Irving??s shoulder] here he sits! I need not tell you how happy and delighted I am to see him here to-night in this capacity." After working for three months on the History of the Conquest of Mexico, Irving found out that the famous historian William Prescott had decided to write a book on the same subject and abandoned his theme, "to be treated by one who will built up from it an enduring monument in the literature of our country." Between the years 1842-45 Irving was U.S. Ambassador in Spain. The appointment was sponsored by Daniel Webster, who was the Secretary of State. At the age of sixty-two Irving wrote to his friends in America: "My hear yearns for home; and I have now probably turned the last corner in life, and my remaining years are growing scanty in number, I begrude every one that I am obliged to pass separated from my cottage and my kindred...."
Irving spent the last years of his life in Tarrytown. From 1848 to 1859 he was President of Astor Library, later New York Public Library. Irving's later publications include MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS (1850), a carefull presentation of the life, beliefs, and character of Mohammed, WOLFERT'S ROOST (1855), and his five-volume The Life of George Washington. Irving died in Tarrytown on November 28, 1859. Just before retiring for the night, the author had said: "Well, I must arrange my pillows for another weary night! If this could only end!" Irving's major works were published in 1860-61 in 21 volumes.
As an essayist Irving was not interested in the meaning of nature like Emerson or self-inspection like Montaigne. He observered the vanishing pasts of old Europe, the riverside Creole villages of Louisiana, the old Pawnee hunting grounds of Oklahoma, and how ladies fashion moves from one extreme to the other. 'Geoffrey Crayon' was his most prolific fictional mask. Irving once wrote: "There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature." He was the earliest literary figure of the American abroad, who appeared in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., in which also Irving's best-known story 'Rip Van Winkle' was included. It was based on a German folktale, set in the Dutch culture of Pre-Revolutionary War in New York State.
Rip Van Winkle is a farmer who wanders into the Catskill Mountains. He meets there a group of dwarfs playing ninepipes. Rip helps a dwarf and is rewarded with a draught of liquor. He falls into an enchanted sleep. When he awakens, 20 years later, the world has changed. He is an old man with a long, white beard. Rip goes into town and finds everything changed. His wife is dead, his children are grown. The old man entertains the people with tales of the old days and his encounter with the dwarfs. - The theme of Irving's story derives from Diogenes Laertius, Epimenides (c. 200), in which Epimenides is sent by his father into the field to look for a sheep; he lays down in a cave and sleeps fifty-seven years. When awake, he goes on looking for the sheep, thinking that he had been taking a short snap.
Irving also used other German folktales in his short stories, among them The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. "The headless horseman was often seen here. An old man who did not believe in ghosts told of meeting the headless horseman coming from his trip into the Hollow. The horseman made him climb up behind. They rode over bushes, hills, and swamps. When they reached the bridge, the horseman suddenly turned into a skeleton. He threw the old man into the brook and sprang away over the treetops with a clap of thunder." The story was probably based on a story by Karl Musäus (1735-1787), a German academic writer, who was among the first to collect local folktales. This story popularized the image of the headless horseman, and formed the basis for an operetta by Douglas Moore, The Headless Horseman, with libretto by Stephen Vincent Ben??t. The tale was filmed as the second half of Disney's animated movie The Adventures of Ichabold and Mr Toad (1949). Tim Burton's film version from 1999 has darkened and partly changed the story. The protagonist, Ichabold Crane, is a constable from New York, not a schoolteacher. He believes in rational methods of detection, and is sent in the farming community of Sleepy Hollow in the of upstate New York to investigate three recent murders. The townspeople know who the culprit is: a long-dead Hessian mercenary nicknamed the Headless Horseman who was killed during the Revolutionary War and buried in the Western Woods.
For further reading: Washington Irving: The Critical Reaction, ed. by James W. Tuttleton (1993); Critical Essays on Washington Irving by Ralph M. Aderman (1990); Adrift in the Old World: The Psychological Pilgrimage of Washington Irving by Jeffrey Rubin-Dosky (1988); Washington Irving by William L. Hedges (1965); The Life and Letters of Washington Irving by B.M. Irving (1967, 4 vols.; original edition 1862-64), The Life of Washington Irving by Stanley T. Williams (1935, 2 vols.) - Note 1: Among Irving's s friends in England was Sir Walter Scott. - Note 2: In Joseph Heller's novel Catch-22 the central character, Captain Yossarian, signs the censored letters of the soldiers with the name Washington Irving (or Irving Washington) - SEE ALSO: Mark Twain whose early short stories arouse from the various folk and humorous traditions. - In Finnish: Irvingin novelli 'Rip Van Winkle' on suomennettu antologiassa Amerikkalaisia kertojia.
LETTERS OF JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, 1802 SALMAGUNDI, 1807 (with William I. and J.K. Paulding) A HISTORY OF NEW YORK, BY DIETRICH KNICKERBOCKER, 1809 THE SKETCH BOOK, 1819-20 (as Geoffrey Crayon) - contains 'Rip Van Winkle' and 'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' - film adaptations: The Adventures of Ichabold and Mr Toad (1949) ; Sleepy Hollow, dir. by Tim Burton (1999), starring Johnny Depp, Christina Ricci, Michael Gambon, Miranda Richardson, Christopher Walken, Casper Van Dien, Jeffrey Jones, Martin Landau BRACEBRIDGE HALL, 1822 LETTERS OF JONATHAN OLDSTYLE, GENT., 1824 TALES OF A TRAVELLER, 1824 A HISTORY AND VOYAGES OF CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS, 1828 THE CHRONICLE OF THE CONQUEST OF GRANADA, 1829 THE COMPANIONS OF COLUMBUS, 1831 THE ALHAMBRA, 1832 - Alhambra A TOUR ON THE PRAIRIES, 1835 ABBOTSFORD AND NEWSTEAD ABBEY, 1835 THE CRAYON MISCELLANY, 1835 (3 vols.) ASTORIA, 1836 ESSAYS AND SKETCHES, 1837 THE ADVENTURES OF CAPTAIN BONNEVILLE, 1837 THE LIFE OF OLIVER GOLDSMITH, 1840 WORKS, 1848-51 (15 vols.) MAHOMET AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 1849 THE LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON, 1855-59 WOLFERT'S ROOST, 1855 SPANISH PAPERS AND OTHER MISCELLANIES, 1866 ABU HASSAN, 1924 THE WILD HUNTSMAN, 1924 COMPLETE WORKS, 1969-89 (30 vols.)

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison

Thomas Alva Edison was the most prolific inventor in American history. He amassed a record 1,093 patents covering key innovations and minor improvements in wide range of fields, including telecommunications, electric power, sound recording, motion pictures, primary and storage batteries, and mining and cement technology. As important, he broadened the notion of invention to encompass what we now call innovation-invention, research, development, and commercialization-and invented the industrial research laboratory. Edison's role as an innovator is evident not only in his two major laboratories at Menlo Park and West Orange in New Jersey but in more than 300 companies formed worldwide to manufacture and market his inventions, many of which carried the Edison name, including some 200 Edison illuminating companies.
Early Life
Edison was born in 1847 in the canal town of Milan, Ohio, the last of seven children. His mother, Nancy, had been a school teacher; his father, Samuel, was a Canadian political firebrand who was exiled from his country. The family moved to Port Huron, Michigan, when Thomas was seven. He attended school briefly but was principally educated at home by his mother and in his father's library.
In 1859 Edison began working on a local branch of the Grand Trunk Railroad, selling newspapers, magazines, and candy. At one point he printed a newspaper on the train, and he also conducted chemical experiments in a baggage-car laboratory. By 1862 he had learned enough telegraphy to be employed as an operator in a local office.
From 1863 to 1867 he traveled through the Midwest as an itinerant telegrapher. During these years he read widely, studied and experimented with telegraph technology, and generally acquainted himself with electrical science.
Early Inventive Career
In 1868 Edison became an independent inventor in Boston. Moving to New York the next year, he undertook inventive work for major telegraph companies. With money from those contracts he established a series of manufacturing shops in Newark, New Jersey, where he also employed experimental machinists to assist in his inventive work.
Edison soon acquired a reputation as a first-rank inventor. His work included stock tickers, fire alarms, methods of sending simultaneous messages on one wire, and an electrochemical telegraph to send messages by automatic machinery. The crowning achievement of this period was the quadruplex telegraph, which sent two messages simultaneously in each direction on one wire.
The problems of interfering signals in multiple telegraphy and high speed in automatic transmission forced Edison to extend his study of electromagnetism and chemistry. As a result, he introduced electrical and chemical laboratories into his experimental machine shops.
Near the end of 1875, observations of strange sparks in telegraph instruments led Edison into a public scientific controversy over what he called "etheric force," which only later was understood to be radio waves.
Menlo Park
In 1876, Edison created a freestanding industrial research facility incorporating both a machine shop and laboratories. Here in Menlo Park, on the rail line between New York City and Philadelphia, he developed three of his greatest inventions.
Urged by Western Union to develop a telephone that could compete with Alexander Graham Bell's, Edison invented a transmitter in which a button of compressed carbon changed its resistance as it was vibrated by the sound of the user's voice, a new principle that was used in telephones for the next century.
While working on the telephone in the summer of 1877, Edison discovered a method of recording sound, and in the late fall he unveiled the phonograph. This astounding instrument brought him world fame as the "Wizard of Menlo Park" and the "inventor of the age."
Finally, beginning in the fall of 1878, Edison devoted thirty months to developing a complete system of incandescent electric lighting. During his lamp experiments, he noticed an electrical phenomenon that became known as the "Edison effect," the basis for vacuum-tube electronics.
He left Menlo Park in 1881 to establish factories and offices in New York and elsewhere. Over the next five years he manufactured, improved, and installed his electrical system around the world.
West Orange Laboratory
In 1887, Edison built an industrial research laboratory in West Orange, New Jersey, that remained unsurpassed until the twentieth century. For four years it was the primary research facility for the Edison lighting companies, and Edison spent most of his time on that work. In 1888 and 1889, he concentrated for several months on a new version of the phonograph that recorded on wax cylinders.
Edison worked with William Dickson from 1888 till 1893 on a motion picture camera. Although Edison had always had experimental assistants, this was the clearest instance of a co-invention for which Edison received sole credit.
In 1887 Edison also returned to experiments on the electromagnetic separation and concentration of low-grade iron and gold ores, work he had begun in 1879. During the 1890's he built a full-scale plant in northern New Jersey to process iron ore. This venture was Edison's most notable commercial failure.
Later Years
After the mining failure, Edison adapted some of the machinery to process Portland cement. A roasting kiln he developed became an industry standard. Edison cement was used for buildings, dams, and even Yankee Stadium.
In the early years of the automobile industry there were hopes for an electric vehicle, and Edison spent the first decade of the twentieth century trying to develop a suitable storage battery. Although gas power won out, Edison's battery was used extensively in industry.
In World War I the federal government asked Edison to head the Naval Consulting Board, which examined inventions submitted for military use. Edison worked on several problems, including submarine detectors and gun location techniques.
By the time of his death in 1931, Edison had received 1,093 U.S. patents, a total still untouched by any other inventor. Even more important, he created a model for modern industrial research.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

Harriet Beecher Stowe
Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) - original name Harriet Elisabeth Beecher
American writer and philanthropist, best-known for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1851-52). Stowe wrote the work in reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which made it illegal to assist an escaped slave. In the story 'Uncle Tom' of the title is bought and sold three times and finally beaten to death by his last owner. The book was quickly translated into 37 languages and it sold in five years over half a million copies in the United States. Uncle Tom's Cabin was also among the most popular plays of the 19th century.
"Eliza made her desperate retrest across the river just in the dusk of twilight. The gray mist of evening, rising slowly from the river, enveloped her as she disappeared up the bank, and the swollen current and floundering masses of ice presented a hopeless barrier between her and her pursuer." (from Uncle Tom's Cabin) Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, into a large family. She had two sisters (Catharine and Mary), one half-sister (Isabella), five brothers (William, Edward, George, Henry Ward, and Charles), and two half-brothers (Thomas and James). Harriet herself was the seventh child of her parents, Lyman and Roxana Beecher. "Wisht it had been a boy!" said her father after her birth. Lyman was a controversial Calvinist preacher, who saw himself as a soldier of Christ. Roxana, a granddaughter of General Andrew Ward, died of tuberculosis at 41 - Harriet was four at that time. Two years later a stepmother took over the household.
Stowe was named after her aunt, Harriet Foote, who influenced deeply her thinking, especially with her strong belief in culture. Samuel Foote, her uncle, encouraged her to read works of Lord Byron and Sir Walter Scott. When Stowe was eleven, she entered the seminary at Hartford, Connecticut, kept by her elder sister Catherine. The school had advanced curriculum and she learned languages, natural and mechanical science, composition, ethics, logic, mathematics - subjects that were generally taught to male students. Four years later she was employed as an assistant teacher. Her father married again - he became the president of lane Theological Seminary.
Catherine and Harriet founded a new seminary, the Western Female Institute. With her sister Stowe wrote a children's geography book. In 1834 Stowe began her literary career when she won a prize contest of the Western Monthly Magazine, and soon Stowe was a regular contributor of stories and essays. Her first book, The Mayflower, appeared in 1843.
In 1836 Stowe married Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor at her father's theological seminary. He was a widower; his late wife had been Stowe's friend. The early years of their marriage were marked by poverty. Over the next 14 years Stowe had 7 children. In 1850 Calvin Stowe was offered a professorship at Bowdoin, and they moved to Brunswick, Maine. In Cincinnati Stowe had come in contact with fugitive slaves. She learned about life in the South from her own visits there and saw how cruel slavery was. In addition the Fugitive Slave Law, passed by Congress in 1850, arose much protest - giving shelter or assistance to an escaped slave became a crime. And finally a personal tragedy, the death of her infant Samuel from cholera, led Stowe to compose her famous novel. It was first published in the anti-slavery newspaper The National Era, from June 1851 to April 1852, and later in book form. The story was to some extent based on true events and the life of Josiah Henson. "I could not control the story, the Lord himself wrote it," Stowe once said. "I was but an instument in His hands and to Him should be given all the praise." When Abraham Lincoln met the author he joked, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war." Uncle Tom's Cabin was smuggled into Russia in Yiddish to evade the czarist censor. Leo Tolstoy praised the work and it remained enormously popular also after the Revolution. Celebrity.mrzl.com
"I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me." (from Uncle Tom's Cabin) Stowe's fame opened her doors to the national literary magazines. She started to publish her writings in The Atlantic Monthly and later in Independent and in Christian Union. For some time she was the most celebrated woman writer in The Atlantic Monthly and in the New England literary clubs. In 1853, 1856, and 1859 Stowe made journeys to Europe, where she became friends with George Eliot, Elisabeth Barrett Browning, and Lady Byron. However, the British public opinion turned against her when she charged Lord Byron with incestuous relations with his half-sister. In Lady Byrin Vindicated (1870) she accused him in the writing. Both the magazine Atlantic, where the text first appeared, and Stowe, suffered.
Attacks on the veracity of her portrayal of the South led Stowe to publish The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), in which she presented her source material. A second anti-slavery novel, Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), told the story of a dramatic attempt at slave rebellion.
In Uncle Tom's Cabin the pious old Uncle Tom is sold by his well-intentioned Kentucy owner, Mr. Shelby, who has fallen into debts. The trader also singles out little Harry, Eliza's child, but Eliza takes Harry and heads for the river. Uncle Tom submits to his fate. He is bought first by the idealistic Augustine St Clare after saving her daughter, Little Eve, who falls from the deck of a riverboat. In his New Orleans house, Uncle Tom makes friends with Eva's black friend, the impish Topsy. "Never was born!' persisted Topsy... 'never had no father, nor mother, nor nothin'. I was raised by a speculator, with lots of others." Eva dies from a weakened constitution, and St. Clare is killed in an accident - he is stabbed while trying to separate two brawling men. Tom is sold to the villainous Simon Legree, a Yankee and a brutal cotton plantation owner. "I don't go for savin' niggers. Use up, and buy more, 's my way," he says. Two of Uncle Tom's female slaves, Cassy and Emmeline, pretend to escape and go into hiding. Tom will not reveal their whereabouts and Legree has his lackeys Quimbo and Sambo beat the unprotesting Tom to the point of death. Tom forgives them and dies, just as Mr. Shelby's son arrives to buy him back. Shelby decides to fight for the Abolitionist cause. A parallel plot centers on Eliza, her little child, and her husband George who escape to freedom in Canada using the 'underground railroad.' Other important characters are Miss Ophelia St. Clare, a New England spinster, and Marks, the slave catcher. Cassy meets on the boat north Madame de Throux, sister of George Harris, Eliza's husband. The Harris family leaves for Africa and George Shelby frees his slaves.
After the Civil War the sales of the novel declined. The sentimentality and religiosity of the story was considered a drawback. The first film adaptation was made in 1903. 'Uncle Tom' was used pejoratively, meaning white paternalism and black passivity, undue subservience to white people on the part of black people. In the 1970s Uncle Tom's Cabin, with its strong female characters, started to attract the attention of feminist critics, but Stowe's vision found now defenders. However, Tom's passivity was compared to Gandhi's strategy of peaceful resistance.
Stowe's later works did not gain the same popularity as Uncle Tom's Cabin. She published novels, studies of social life, essays, and a small volume of religious poems. The Stowes lived in Hartford in summer and spent their winters in Florida, where they had a luxurious home. The Pearl of Orr's Island (1862), Old-Town Folks (1869), and Poganuc People (1878) were partly based on her husband's childhood reminiscenes and are among the first examples of local color writing in New England. Poganuc People was Stowe's last novel. Her mental faculties failed in 1888, two years after the death of her husband. She died on July 1, 1896 in Hartford, Connecticut.
For further reading: World's Greatest Hit: Uncle Tom's Cabin by H. Birdoff (1947); Patriotic Gore by E. Wilson (1962); Runaway to Heaven by J. Johnston (1963); Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe, ed. by Elizabeth Ammons (1980); Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin by Elsa Dixler (paperback 1985); Harriet Beecher Stowe in Europe by Charles Beecher, Joseph S. Van Why; ed. (1986); Harriet Beecher Stowe by John R. Adams (1989); Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life by Joan D. Hedrick (1994); Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Beecher Preachers by Jean Fritz (1994); Harriet: The Life and World of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Norma Johnston (1994); Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, ed. by Harold Bloom (1996) - See also: John Steinbeck and the novel The Grapes of Wrath, which social impact has been compared to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin.Selected works:
THE MAYFLOWER: OR, SKETCHES OF SCENES AND CHARACTERS AMONG THE DESCENDANTS OF THE PILGRIMS, 1843 UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, 1852 - Setä Tuomon tupa - Several film adaptations: 1903, dir. by Edwin S. Porter; 1913, dir. by Harry Pollard; film 1914, dir. by William Robert Daly; 1918, dir. by J. Searle Dawley; 1927, dir. by Harry Pollard, adapted by A.P. Younger and Harvey Thew; Onkel Tom's Hutte, a German production in 1965, dir. by Geza von Radvany; 1987, dir. by Stan Lathan, starring Averi Brooks, Kate Burton, Bruce Dern, Paula Kelly, Phylicia Rashad, Kathryn Walker THE KEY TO UNCLE TOM'S CABIN, 1853 SUNNY MEROIRS OF FOREIGN LANDS, 1854 DRED, 1956 A TALE OF GREAT DISMAL SWAMP, 1856 THE MINISTER'S WOOING, 1859 THE PEARL OF ORR'S ISLAND, 1862 LITTLE FOXES, 1866 RELIGIOUS POEMS, 1867 THE CHIMNEY CORNER, 1868 OLDTOWN FOLKS, 1869 magazine article THE TRUE STORY OF LORD BYRON'S LIFE, 1869 LADY BYRON VINDICATED, 1870 OLDTOWN FIRESIDE STORIES, 1871 MY WIFE AND I, 1871 SAM LAWSON'S OLDTOWN FIRESIDE STORIES, 1872 WOMAN IN SACRED HISTORY, 1873 PALMETTO LEAVES, 1873 WE AND OUR NEIGHBOURS, 1875 CAPTAIN KIDD'S MONEY AND OTHER STORIES, 1876 POQANUC PEOPLE, 1878 A DOG'S MISSION, 1881 THE WRITINGS, 1896 REGIONAL SKETCHES, 1971 (ed. by J.R. Adams)