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Article: Unmasking Harriet Beecher Stowe Joan Hedrick, who won a Pulitzer for biography, says her subject was no prize
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- May 3, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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HARTFORD -- Joan D. Hedrick spent 10 years researching and
writing "Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life," which won this year's
Pulitzer Prize for biography. But there are still some things about
Stowe that disturb her.
Sitting at a polished oak library table in the Victorian mansion
that houses Stowe's manuscripts and papers -- and is next door to
Stowe's own, more modest house -- Hedrick purses her lips and gives
her fingers a half-twist as she pauses to consider the extent of her
ambivalence toward the author of "Uncle Tom's Cabin."
When she answers, the evaluation of Stowe's politics swiftly
builds from a carefully chosen "distasteful" to a very passionate
"outrageous."
"It is her attitudes ...