1853 Description of Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Covington Journal printed this piece on January 8, 1853, just a few weeks after Uncle Tom's Cabin had been published. Strangely enough, I could not find any reaction to the book in this newspaper around that time, though I will search through some later editions too.

The writer of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" is thus described in the Boston Herald:

Mrs. Stowe is about forty years of age, low in stature, having a brilliant expressive eye, short features, hair thin and dark, with an occasional of grey, and her whole contour, as the French would say, being expressive of a highly nervous temperament, with quick perceptive powers of reading the minds of all present at a quick glance. All in all, however, she is not as good looking as her writings had led us to suppose.

The Springfield Republican Says: 
Some may get a better idea of Mrs. S' personal appearance from the following anecdote. Her husband, Professor Stowe, not being able to meet her personally at the railroad station on her expected arrival home, sent a student with the following directions to do the polite. He returned with an answer to the Professor that his wife did not come.  

'Impossible,' says the husband, 'she was certainly to arrive by this train with her children. ' 

'But she assuredly did not come - for the only female that arrived was an Irish woman with two children, who got into a carriage and drove off.' 

The Professor found his wife at home!

courtesy wikipedia