Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin "is worthy of any head and any heart that ever inspired a book," wrote Charles Dickens to a young mother of seven named Harriet Beecher Stowe.￯﾿ﾽ

Nearly every author dreams of writing a book that will literally change the world. A few have succeeded, and Stowe is such a marvel. Although the American anti-slavery movement had existed at least as long as the nation itself, Stowe￯﾿ﾽs Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin (1852) galvanized public opinion as nothing had before. The book sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 in its first year. Its vivid dramatization of slavery￯﾿ﾽs cruelties so aroused readers that Abraham Lincoln is said to have told Stowe her work had been a catalyst for the Civil War.

Today the novel is often labeled condescending, but its characters￯﾿ﾽTom, Topsy, Little Eva, Eliza, and the evil Simon Legree￯﾿ﾽstill have the power to move our hearts. Though "Uncle Tom" has become a synonym for a fawning yes-man, Stowe￯﾿ﾽs Tom is actually American literature￯﾿ﾽs first black hero, a man who suffers for refusing to obey his white oppressors.

Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin is a living, relevant story, passionate in its vivid depiction of the cruelest forms of injustice and inhumanity￯﾿ﾽand the courage it takes to fight against them. As Booker T. Washington said, "The value of Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin to the cause of Abolition can never be justly estimated."
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Introduction and Notes by Amanda Claybaugh
Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, Amanda Claybaugh is currently at work on a project considering the relation between realism and social reform in nineteenth-century British and American novels.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut. Precocious and independent as a child, Stowe enrolled in the seminary run by her eldest sister, Catharine, where she received a traditionally "male" education. In 1850 Congress passed the Fugitive Slave Law prohibiting assistance to fugitives. Stowe was moved to present her objections to the law on paper, and in June 1851 the first installment of Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin appeared in the antislavery journal National Era. Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin: or, Life Among the Lowly met with mixed reviews when it appeared in book form in 1852, but soon became an international bestseller. Some critics dismissed it as abolitionist propaganda, while others hailed it as a masterpiece. The great Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy praised Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin as "flowing from love of God and man."


"Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs Cabin was the first American novel to sell more than a million copies, and no book of any kind, except for the Bible, had ever sold so well. Astonishing as the sales figures are, even they fail to suggest the full extent of Uncle Tom￯﾿ﾽs popularity. For the book was published in an era when novels were still treated as a kind of communal property,￯﾿ﾽ￯﾿ﾽ borrowed from circulating libraries, passed from hand to hand, read aloud to entire households at a time; knowing this, one reviewer speculated that Uncle Tom had ten readers for every copy sold."￯﾿ﾽfrom the Introduction by Amanda Claybaugh