Introduction & Overview of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe

Uncle Tom's Cabin Introduction

When Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly was first published in 1852, no one-least of all its author, Harriet Beecher Stowe-expected the book to become a sensation, but this antislavery novel took the world by storm. It was to become the second best-selling book in the world during the nineteenth century, second only to the Bible, and it touched off a flurry of criticism and praise. Stowe had written the novel as an angry response to the 1850 passage of the Fugitive Slave Law, which punished those who aided runaway slaves and diminished the rights of fugitive as well as freed slaves. Hoping to move her fellow Americans to protest this law and slavery in general, Stowe attempted to portray "the institution of slavery just as it existed." Indeed, Uncle Tom's Cabin was nearly unique at the time in its presentation of the slaves' point of...
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