The Other World

by Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Other World by Harriet Beecher Stowe is an ethereal musing of how she imagines existence beyond our earth life to be.

As well a being a beautiful poem, it gives us pause to reflect on our own thoughts about what may lie ahead of and beyond us.

Although she was most famous for her novel Uncle Tom's Cabin and her abolitionist work, Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) also wrote many lovely poems. Somehow she managed to find time to have published 30 books, several short stories and many poems amidst raising seven children and managing a household.

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut to Protestant preacher and a mother Roxanna, who died when Harriet was only five years old. Interestingly, her mother was always involved in improving herself (personal development), something Harriet continued to do, as well, throughout her whole life.

Luckily for Harriet (and the rest of us), she married a supportive husband, Calvin Stowe, who encouraged her writing and a career as an author. In a letter he wrote to her in 1840 he said, "My dear, you must be a literary woman. It is so written in the book of fate... Make all your calculations accordingly."

The Stowes were also fortunate to be neighbors to Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, who lived across the street from them at Forest Street in Hartford, Connecticut. As it happens, Clemens wrote his most famous books including The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn while he lived there. The two families were quite friendly and spent much time together.