HARTFORD, July 1.--Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," "Dred," and other works of worldwide reputation, died at her home, 73 Forest Street, at noon today without regaining consciousness. She passed peacefully away, as though into a deep sleep. By her bedside at the time were her son, the Rev. Charles Edward Stowe of Simsbury, her two daughters, Eliza and Harriet; her sister, Mrs. Isabella Beecher Hooker, and her husband, the Hon. John Hooker; Dr. Edward B. Hooker, her nephew, who was also her medical attendant, and other relatives. Mrs. Stowe's malady of many years' continuance, a mental trouble, took an acute form on Friday, when congestion of the brain, with partial paralysis, appeared. During Friday, Saturday, and Sunday Mrs. Stowe was about the house, but suffering very much. Since Monday she had been confined to her bed, and yesterday afternoon became unconscious. Mrs. Stowe, until about seven years ago, was in good health, although she was frail bodily. She was about the city and attended church regularly at the Winsor Avenue Congregational Church, of which her son, the Rev. Charles E. Stowe, was then the pastor. Her health for some time, however, had been precarious, and she had needed the constant attention of a nurse, who accompanied her about her walks in the vicinity of her home. She always had pleasant words for the children of the neighborhood, with whom she talked in her rambles, and seemed to be at her brightest when thinking of and talking with them. Her condition has been such that her death at almost any time during the last three or four years could hardly have been unexpected. She first came to Hartford in 1824, as a schoolgirl, and had lived here permanently, with a Winter residence in Florida, since 1865. Mrs. Stowe's funeral will be attended at her home at 5 o'clock tomorrow afternoon. Relatives, friends, and neighbors are invited. Her body will be taken to Andover, Mass., Friday, on the train leaving here at 2 A.M., on the New-England Road. The burial will be in the cemetery connected with the Andover Theological Seminary, where Mrs. Stowe's husband, Prof. Calvin E. Stowe, and her son Henry, are buried. Career of the Famous Authoress The death of Harriet Beecher Stowe is more than the ending of a woman's life of whatever degree of fame. It marks the extinction of genius in a family, and is one of the closing leaves in an era of our century. The more famous children of a famous father leave worthy descendants but none of their own mental gifts or rank. Rarely, indeed, is there so much in a single life so memorable or so interesting as in that of the writer of probably the most widely read work of fiction ever penned. "Beecher on Intemperance" was a famous book in its day. Its author was the Rev. Lyman Beecher, father of Henry Ward and Harriet and the rest, who almost constitute a genus by themselves, so marked are they in their talents. The stern and eloquent old Calvinist parson was settled in Litchfield, Conn., and there the daughter, who was to surpass her father, marked man as he was in his time, was born on June 14, 1812. In those earliest days of hers perhaps nothing is more remarkable than that simplicity of training which is still characteristic of New-England life in regions not yet modernized. They were the affectionate children of loving parents, and became such masters of laughter and tears as men and women seldom are. Yet they grew up in a home atmosphere where feeling was repressed. Birthdays and family festivals and such little loving gifts and words as now pass between brothers and sisters were infrequent, if not actually discouraged in that family. Of her mental traits none was earlier or more fully developed than her memory. The bulk of the Bible and extended passages from most of the English classics were at her tongue's end and instantly upon demand. But it cannot be said that her literary gifts were precocious. Last year she herself recalled, in an article published for a charitable purpose, her first attempt at authorship. It was an epitaph composed at the age of eight apropos of the death of a kitten. It was decently buried beneath such an inscription as any bright little girl might write about a loved and dead Tabby: Her fifteen years of childhood were uneventful, but spent in an exceptional environment of cultured society with lawyers, ministers, and professors, who were frequenters of her father's circle. Her mother died in her early youth, and she was still a slip of a girl when she went to help her sister Catharine, who was the head of a successful girls school at Hartford. Thus, prosily her life passed until in her twenty-first year, on Jan. [text unclear], 1828, she married Calvin E. Stowe, Professor of Languages and Biblical Literature at Lane Seminary, Cincinnati. That was the turning point of her career. Nowhere were the "underground railway" and pathetic incidents under the fugitive slave law more familiar than on the border of Ohio. Nowhere was there a stronger anti-slavery agitation or more flourishing hotbed of abolition than at Lane Seminary. That this remark is not made at random appears from the record that a majority of the students left the seminary because the Trustees insisted upon their disbanding an anti-slavery debating society. Perhaps the seminary owed its escape from such scenes as attended the mobbing of the Colored Orphan Asylum in this city solely to the difficulty of reaching it from Cincinnati. In anticipation of violence, the Stowe residence was armed and equipped with a large bell to summon help. In her husband's house many a fugitive was sheltered and many a thrilling tale rehearsed. Thus, in a sense, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was not a freak of fancy. Its inspiration and its incidents came from actual life. But the story of that book--a historical event and influence second only to some of the Bibles of the world--must be reserved while its author's life is followed hastily to its close. After leaving Cincinnati the Stowes lived for a time in Brunswick, Me., her husband being a professor at Bowdoin College. In 1852 they settled in Andover, in the famous theological seminary of which village he also held a chair. Thus it is not left to inference that he was a man of character and parts, and in no danger of being submerged even in his wife's more famous personality. He was an ideal old-time New-Englander, about ten years older than his wife. His flowing white beard and silvery hair, falling from a fine head bald on top, suggested the reference to the "dear old rabbi" contained in a personal letter to his wife from George Eliot. His death preceded his wife's about ten years. Mrs. Stowe has left this picture of herself at the age when she wrote her most famous book: "A little bit of a woman, rather more than forty, as withered and dry as a pinch of snuff, never very well worth looking at in my best days, and now a decidedly used-up article." But she held her own very well, and in another personal letter, in firm and regular writing, she said of herself: "I was seventy-six on my last birthday, and have all my bodily powers perfect; can walk from three to seven miles per day without fatigue; have a healthy appetite, and quiet sleep every night." She was one of the young friends of the professor's first wife. Accordingly their first children, twin daughters, were named Harriet Beecher and Eliza Stowe. A younger daughter is the wife of the Ritualistic pastor of the Church of the Messiah, Boston. A son, the Rev. Charles E. Stowe, was ordained in 1878 as the pastor of the Windsor Avenue Congregational Church, Hartford. Between that city in the Summer, and in the Winter at their orange plantation, at Mandarin, Fla., on the St. John's River, the family divided its later years. In Hartford they were members of a delightful coterie, including Charles Dudley Warner and Mark Twain as near neighbors. Their plain brick residence on Forest Street is remarkable chiefly for the portraits, souvenirs, and tributes which have come unsought from famous people all over the world, but the walls are also adorned with many paintings by Mrs. Stowe. She was an artist only in the second place, and if she had not become famous by her writings her transcripts of natural scenes in color would have won her credit enough to satisfy most women. In her library are 26 volumes of a somewhat unusual character. They are folios sumptuously bound in morocco, and all cased in rare old oak. On the first page is an address illuminated on vellum, and adopted at a meeting at Stafford House, London, Lord Shaftesbury presiding. Following the address come the signatures of 562,448 women, from her who ranks next to the Queen to the humblest mill operator in Manchester. But this is properly part of the history of a book more fully to be described. Mrs. Stowe's literary life began shortly after marriage, and was long confined to fugitive tales and sketches, afterward assembled and printed under the title of "The Mayflower." She did nothing memorable until her maturity, and then leaped full-fledged into the company of the illustrious women of the century. Besides "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of which the narrative is given below, she did nothing better than "The Minister's Wooing," (1859,) which pleased the critics at least as well as it did the public. Possibly her least happy venture was "Lady Byron Vindicated." In 1853 she had visited England and formed the acquaintance of the unhappy wife of the poet, and upon what she then learned was based an unmentionable charge against him. Upon this tour was based "Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands." In 1856 appeared her second anti-slavery novel, "Dred." It was a powerful work, but marred by the sentiment inspired by the attack upon Sumner in the Senate Chamber. It was thus that the bitter, avenging spirit was given to Dred at the expense of the art of the story. She has written other works creditable enough, but they will not live. She wisely stayed her pen while still it commanded readers. She had made no sustained effort since the garden party in 1882, the third in the series given by her publishers to distinguished American authors who had attained threescore and ten. The galaxy assembled at Gov. Claflin's seat, The Old Elms, at Newtonville, goes far to answer the taunting query, "Who reads an American book?" Surely no history of the Nation and generation is complete without taking account of those then assembled in tribute to her genius. The half of them cannot be mentioned here, but there were Holmes and Whittier and Howells and a score of others, not to mention the Beechers, and the authoress of "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of which some tardy and insufficient account may now be given. America's greatest orator has said that true eloquence is very rare, because there go to make it up three things almost never found together--the man, the subject, and the occasion. Never was there a riper occasion than when the country was writhing in its death grip with slavery. Never was there a subject appealing more deeply to the tenderest sentiments of every human being. And if it is added with appearance of extravagance that never was there an uninspired intellect better adapted to strike the glowing iron, the record is confidently appealed to for the prototype. In the English language the Bible and Shakespeare's works are its only rivals. Within five years a half-million copies were sold in the United States alone, a degree of success phenomenal, but far inferior to that recorded in England. In 1855 The Edinburgh Review declared that no record was possible after 1852, but in that year a million copies were sold in England, probably ten times as many as of any other volume except the Bible and Prayer Book. In each year of the generation since gone by the sale has steadily continued, and every year the book in its dramatic form is seen upon the stage by many audiences. There could not be a greater error than to limit the vogue of the book to the comparatively few millions who speak English. Here is a stanza by Holmes, read at the garden party above mentioned: Lest this should be thought poetic license it will be well to give what the lawyers call a "bill of particulars" in the shape of a few of the titles under which this lady has carried her fame to the ends of the earth. Here they are, selected incompletely and at random, from a compilation by one of her publishers: "Oncle Tom's Hutte," "Onkel Tomas," "De Negerut," "De Hut van Onkel Tom," "Tama's Bataya," "La Capanna dello Zio Tommaso," "Chata Wuja Tomasza," "A Cabana do Pai Thomaz," "La Cabana del Tio Tomas," "Khizhina dyadi Tomaj," "Onkel Tom's Stuga," & c. Who reads an American book, indeed? In one of the above languages there were twelve versions, and no one knows how many editions. It has already been hinted how the book came to be written. Escaping slaves were familiar to her. She heard their stories, she saw their wounds, she helped their flight. Uncle Tom was the husband of a domestic in her family, and his death was the chapter first written. Topsy was a pickaninny named Celeste who lived on Walnut Hills, Cincinnati. Eliza's escape across the ice floating in the Ohio was an incident recorded in the press of that period by a witness of it, and so the story came to her eyes. Thus she was brimming over with her topic when she was asked to write a story for The National Era. It was begun in the expectation that it would run through a month or so, but it was scarcely finished within a year. Week by week, the installments were produced and read aloud to the family before being dispatched to the narrow circle of readers who saw it first. To say that it was not appreciated in serial form is to state the case mildly. Her publisher was anxious for her to stop. Her brother, Henry Ward, warned her to cut it short, lest its length should prevent printing it as a book. She answered them never a word. Her genius was in travail, and, whatever others might think, she could not stop or turn. The death of Uncle Tom was conceived at the communion table, and when her little sons heard it they declared slavery was the wickedest thing in the world. After the chapter of Eva's death, the author was prostrated three days in bed. In one sense, a wholly reverent one, it may be said that she was inspired. She was wholly beside herself and in the control of her idea. She did not consider the book hers. She belonged to the book. In her own phrase: "That wasn't mine; that was given to me." Possibly from this accustomed expression of hers came the preposterous story that the wonder- working volume was not hers, but her brother Henry's. In his jesting way he said that he wrote "Norwood," just to show what he really could do in the way of fiction, and the result "killed dead" the theory that he wrote "Uncle Tom's Cabin."