This month, we are celebrating the birthday of Harriet Beecher Stowe and her best-selling anti-slavery novel that catapulted her into the spotlight. Uncle Tom's Cabin helped influence anti-slavery movement in the northern parts of the United States as well as Britain, while simultaneously sparking anger in the southern parts of America.
It is the best known book about American slavery, and was so incendiary upon its first publication in 1852 that it actually ignited the social flames that led to Civil War less than a decade later.
What began as a series of sketches for the Cincinnati abolitionist newspaper The National Era scandalized the North, was banned in the South, and ultimately became the bestselling novel of the 19th century. Today, controversy over this melodramatic tale of the dignified slave Tom, the brutal plantation owner Simon Legree, and Stowe's other vividly drawn characters continues, as modern scholars debate the work's newly appreciated feminist undertones and others decry it as the source of enduring stereotypes about African Americans.
As one of the most influential books in U.S. history, it deserves to be read by all students of literature and of the American story.
About the Author
American abolitionist and author Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was born in Connecticut, daughter of a Congregationalist minister and sister to abolitionist theologian Henry Ward Beecher. She wrote more than two dozen books, both fiction and nonfiction.
We are pleased to offer the this great Classic title in both a practical paperback and attractive hardcover.
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