Literature
Uncle Tom's Cabin
1852

The novel, and later stage play presentations, of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, represented one of the most influential literary efforts on American history.

The author, Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the daughter of the prominent Congregational clergyman, the Reverend Lyman Beecher, and the sister of Henry Ward Beecher. In 1832 the family moved from New England to Cincinnati, the home of Lane Theological Seminary, which was known as a hotbed of abolitionist thinking. There Harriet married Calvin E. Stowe, a member of the faculty, and also gained some knowledge of slavery as it existed across the Ohio River in neighboring Kentucky.

In 1850 Stowe and her husband moved to Maine where she began work on what became Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Published first in 1851-52 as installments in an abolitionist magazine, the story came out in book form in 1852. It was an immediate success, selling more than 300,000 copies in its first year. Later it was translated into more than 20 languages and sold an astounding 1.5 million copies.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin was reviled in the South as abolitionist propaganda, but sales in that region were very strong.

Abraham Lincoln is reported to have said when he met Stowe, “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin was by no measure a literary masterpiece. It was highly romantic and stereotypical, but it served to personalize slavery and its horrors for many readers throughout the world.

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