Faculté des lettres Faculté des lettres

Author Bibliography

Rights of Dumb Animals (1869)

AUTHOR: Stowe, Harriet Beecher

PUBLICATION: “Rights of Dumb Animals.” Our Dumb Animals Vol. 1 no. 9 (2 Feb. 1869): 69.

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006069414

First published in Hearth and Home (2 Jan. 1869): 24.

KEYWORDS: animals, women's rights

RELATED TITLES:

Alcott, Louisa May. “Helping Along”

---. Lulu's Library

---. Under the Lilacs

---. “The Whale's Story”

---. “What the Imps Did”

Alcott, William. “Man His Brother's Keeper”

---. “Shooting Birds”

Anderson, Martha Jane. Mount Lebanon Cedar Boughs

Bergh, Henry. “An Address”

---. “An Anthropozoonet”

---. “Editor, Forest and Stream”

---. “Fashionable Slaughter”

---. “Letter from Mr. Bergh”

---. Married Off

---. “New York Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals”

---. “Pigeon Shooting” (1872)

---. “Pigeon-Shooting” (1875)

Child, Lydia Maria. “Intelligence of Animals”

---. “Kindness to Animals”

---. Letters from New York

---. Letters from New-York. Second Series

---. Letters of Lydia Maria Child

---. “Willie Wild Thing”

Douglass, Frederick. “Address Delivered by Hon. Frederick Douglass”

---. “Lecture on Trip to Europe”

---. “Oration by Hon. Frederick Douglass”

Fiske, Minnie Maddern. The Darkest Stain on American Civilization

---. “What a Deformed Thief this Fashion Is”

Freshel, M. R. L. “Letter”

---. Millenium Guild pamphlets

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Automobile as a Reformer”

---. “The Beast Prison”

---. “The Cattle Train”

---. “On Dogs”

---. “Pets and Children”

---. “Prisons For Animals”

Howells, William Dean. The Altrurian Romances

---. “Qualities without Defects”

---. Tuscan Cities

Lovell, Mary Frances. “Address on Humane Education”

---. “The Commonest Form of Cruelty”

---. “Cruel Teneriffe”

---. “The Fundamental Need of Humane Education”

---. “Mrs. Caroline Earle White: A Retrospect”

---. “Ostrich Plumes"

---. “The Point of View”

---. “The Sham Bull Fights at Atlanta”

---. “The Wearing of Egret Plumes”

---. “Woman's Responsibility Toward the Animal Creation”

Moore, J. Howard. Better-World Philosophy

---. “The Cost of a Skin”

---. “Does Man Overestimate Himself?”

---. “Evolution and Humanitarianism”

---. High School Ethics

---. “The Martyrs of Civilization”

---. The New Ethics

---. “The Unconscious Holocaust”

---. The Universal Kinship

Neff, Flora Trueblood. Along Life’s Pathway

Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Dred

---. Palmetto-Leaves

---. Stories About Our Dogs

Trine, Ralph Waldo. Every Living Creature

Twain, Mark. Mark Twain’s Book of Animals

Ward, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps. “The Ermine”

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen):

The article is republished from Stowe’s own publication, Hearth and Home.

Stowe opens with the argument that of all the oppressed classes, non-human animals are the most deserving of human intervention because they can neither speak nor write for themselves and are unable to learn (69). She implicitly draws together the activist conventions in support of women's suffrage with the need to advocate similarly for nonhuman beings. She surveys the moral wrongs of common human activities such as: hunting, caring for domestic animals, and killing household pests like rats.

Last updated on July 13th, 2026

SNSF project 100015_204481

@VLS@veganism.social | VeganLiteraryStudies | @veganliterarystudies | @vegan_lit_studies

How to cite this page:

Skibo, Bryn. 2024. "Rights of Dumb Animals [summary]." Vegan Literary Studies: An American Textual History, 1776-1900. Edited by Deborah Madsen. University of Geneva. <Date accessed.> <https://www.unige.ch/vls/bibliography/author-bibliography/stowe-harriet-beecher-1811-1896/rights-dumb-animals-1869>.