What does the speaker say about the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

Harriet Beecher Stowe is best known for her novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a book that details the harshness of plantation life in the south. The book was extremely popular in the United States as well as in other countries. Ironically though, for the attention given to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it is far from Stowe’s best work. In fact, Stowe’s best writing is about village life in the New England states in the 19th century. In recording the customs of the villages she wrote about, Stowe claimed that her purpose was to reflect the images as realistically as possible. She usually succeeded, for her settings were often described factually and in detail. In this sense, she was an important forerunner to the realistic movement that became popular later in the 19th century. She was one of the first writers to use local dialect for her characters when they spoke. And she did this thirty years before Mark Twain popularized the use of local dialect. She was born in Connecticut and as a young woman there, she worked as a teacher. The teaching job helped lead to her first published work, a geography book for children.