Calvin Ellis Stowe (April 6, 1802 – August 22, 1886) was an American Biblical scholar who helped spread public education in the United States.

[2][3] He was the husband and literary agent of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of the best-seller Uncle Tom's Cabin.

Stowe had an insatiable craving for books, and acquired the rudiments of Latin by studying at odd moments during his apprenticeship in the paper mill.

[1] His earnest desire and determined efforts to gain an education attracted the attention of benefactors who sent him to an academy in Gorham, Maine in 1819 or 1820.

[1][4] He entered Bowdoin College and in 1821 Stowe became a member of the Peucinian literary society which had a collection of 600 to 700 titles.

[4] President Franklin Pierce was a classmate, who said that he benefited by sitting next to Stowe when taking tests.

[7] At the instigation of Moses Stuart, a professor at Andover, he completed a scholarly translation of Jahn's Hebrew Commonwealth.

He published a translation from the Latin, with notes, of Lowth's Lectures on the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews.

[4][9] He was also the librarian, responsible for building what grew to a collection of 10,000 volumes by 1837, some of which were acquired during a book-buying trip to Europe in May 1836.

In May 1836, he sailed for England, primarily to purchase a library for Lane seminary, but he received at the same time an official appointment from the Ohio State Legislature to visit as agent the public schools of Europe, particularly those of Prussia.

[4] He also published The Religious Element in Education, a lecture (1844); and The Right Interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures, inaugural address (Andover, 1853).

[4][10] They lived in Cincinnati after their marriage and moved to Brunswick, Maine in 1850, during a period of unrest due to the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850.

[14][15] In 1864, owing to failing health and increasing infirmities, he resigned his professorship and moved to Hartford, Connecticut.