The Minister's Wooing

(1859)

A historical novel set in 18th-century New England, this novel explores New England history, highlights the issue of slavery, and critiques the Calvinist theology in which Stowe was raised. Due to similarities in setting, comparisons are often drawn between this work and Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter (1850). However, in contrast to Hawthorne's work, The Minister's Wooing is a "sentimental romance"; its central plot revolves around courtship and marriage. Moreover, Stowe's exploration of the regional history of New England deals primarily with the domestic sphere, the New England response to slavery, and the psychological impact of the Calvinist doctrines of predestination and disinterested benevolence.

INTRODUCTION.

The author has endeavoured in this story to paint a style of

life and manners which existed in New England in the earlier

days of her national existence.

Some of the principal characters are historic: the leading

events of the story are founded on actual facts, although the

author has taken the liberty to arrange and vary them for

the purposes of the story.

The author has executed the work with a reverential tenderness

for those great and religious minds who laid in New

England the foundations of many generations, and for those

institutions and habits of life from which, as from a fruitful

germ, sprang all the present prosperity of America.

Such as it is, it is commended to the kindly thoughts of that

British fireside from which the fathers and mothers of America

first went out to give to English ideas and institutions a

new growth in a new world.

H. B. STOWE.

18 Montague Street, Russell Square, August 25, 1859.