Connecticut - Literary Connecticut

Connecticut Literature

Samuel Clemens / Mark Twain (1835-1910)
A prolific journalist, fiction writer, essayist, and lecturer, Samuel Clemens enjoyed a life that spanned enormous changes in the American character and landscape. Born in Missouri, a slave-holding state, during the presidency of Andrew Jackson, Clemens traveled the world and died a decade before World War I, when the United States was on the threshold of becoming a global leader. Clemens traveled widely but built a home in Connecticut, where he would spend some of his most productive years, creating, among other works, his masterpiece Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

Clemens grew up in Hannibal, Missouri, and spent much of his childhood among his father’s and uncle’s slaves, hearing the slaves’ stories and spirituals. His first job, at 11, was as a printer’s apprentice at a local newspaper, launching his reporting and writing career. After working at newspapers in New York City and Philadelphia, Clemens returned at age 22 to Missouri to work as a riverboat pilot on the Mississippi. The outbreak of the Civil War ended river traffic, so Clemens headed west, picking up stories that would later appear in his book, Roughing It. He wrote for newspapers in Nevada and San Francisco, using the pen name Mark Twain. He also took a reporting trip for the Sacramento paper to the Sandwich Islands (now Hawaii). Later travels to Europe and the Holy Land were chronicled in his first book, The Innocents Abroad, published in 1869. He married Olivia Langdon in 1870, and in 1871 the family moved to Hartford. In 1873, Clemens turned to social criticism, co-writing The Gilded Age, an attack on corruption, big business, and American greed.

A year later after publication of The Gilded Age, Clemens’s lavish, 19-room house on Farmington Avenue in Hartford was completed. The couple and their three daughters lived on Farmington Avenue until 1891. Here, Clemens wrote The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, Life on the Mississippi, The Prince and the Pauper, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Because of bad investments during these years, Clemens was approaching bankruptcy. The family moved to Europe to economize and pay off debts. During these years his work became more critical of imperialistic behaviors by America and Europe. On a visit back to Hartford, the couple’s oldest daughter died from meningitis at age 24, and her parents never returned to Hartford to live. The rest of his life was spent in Europe and New York before a final move to Redding, Connecticut, in 1908, two years before Clemens’s death.

The Mark Twain House & Museum
351 Farmington Ave.
Hartford, Connecticut 06105
Phone: 860-247-0998
Hours: Monday through Saturday 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Sunday noon to 5:30 p.m.; closed Tuesdays January to April.
Cost: Fee charged. Admission is by guided tour only. Free parking. Visitors should allow at least two hours for the tour and a visit to the museum.

Whimsical and full of odd details and flourishes, the Mark Twain house, where the family lived from 1874 to 1891, was designed by architect Edward Tuckerman Potter. The 19-room house is light-hearted and unpredictable. It has many different levels and asymmetrical gables. Chimneys and towers jut from broad, sweeping roof lines Many styles from distant cultures are presented in pattern, texture, and color. An eclectic taste combines northern Africa, Asian, and Indian images.

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)
Harriet Beecher Stowe is remembered most today as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which sold 10,000 copies in its first week off the press and helped solidify opposition to slavery before the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln greeted her during a visit in 1862 as “the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war.” After publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe became an international celebrity and very popular author.

Harriet Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, to a dynamic Congregationalist minister who preached vociferously against slavery. The family prized education, and many of the Harriet’s 10 brothers and sisters became social reformers. Harriet attended and later taught at Hartford Female Seminary. In 1832 her father moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he took a position at Lane Theological Seminary. There, Harriet met and married Calvin E. Stowe, a professor at Lane, and the two began to establish their family. Cincinnati was across the river from Kentucky, a slave state, and it was here that Harriet observed and learned to abhor slavery.

In 1850 Calvin Stowe moved the family to Brunswick, Maine, where he joined the faculty of his alma mater, Bowdoin College. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which was first published in an abolitionist newspaper, The National Era, was written largely in Brunswick. In 1852 the story was published in book form. Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought the evils of slavery to the attention of Americans more vividly than ever before.

From Brunswick, the Stowes moved in 1863 to Andover, Massachusetts, where Calvin taught at Andover Theological Seminary. In 1864, after his retirement, the family moved to Hartford, Connecticut. Here they built their house, Oakholm. In 1873, the Stowes moved to their last home, the brick Victorian house on Forest Street in Hartford.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House and Library
77 Forest Street
Hartford, Connecticut 06105
Phone: 860-522-9258 or 860-522-9258 ext. 317
Hours: Open year-round. Mondays from Memorial Day to Columbus Day and the month of December 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Tuesday through Saturday all year 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.; Sunday noon to 4:30 p.m.
Cost: Fee charged

This historic site includes a Visitor Center that occupies a carriage house built in 1873, a museum shop, the Harriet Beecher Stowe House, which is open for tours, and the Katharine Seymour Day House. A tour of the Stowe House provides an intimate glimpse into the life of the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Day House offers magnificent interiors with changing exhibits and a research library. Guided tours of the Victorian gardens are offered seasonally.