Uncle Tom's Cabin
03/20/1852 AD published
Uncle Tom's Cabin outraged people in the American South. The novel was also roundly criticized by slavery supporters.
Acclaimed Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms declared the work utterly false, while others called the novel criminal and slanderous.
Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama, being forced to leave town for selling the novel to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing a slave's severed ear).
Many Southern writers, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel.
Based on the reception of the serial version, the publisher, John P. Jewett, was convinced the book would be very popular and had made the unusual decision (for the time) to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing.
He was correct, in book form, the novel sold 3,000 copies on the first day alone, and soon sold out its complete print run. A number of other editions were soon printed (including a deluxe edition in 1853, featuring 117 illustrations by Billings).
In the first year of publication, 300,000 copies of Uncle Tom's Cabin were sold. At that point, however, "demand came to an unexpected halt.... No more copies were produced for many years, and if, as is claimed, Abraham Lincoln greeted Stowe in 1862 as 'the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war,' the work had effectively been out of print for many years." Jewett went out of business, and it was not until Ticknor and Fields put the work back in print in November 1862 that demand began again to increase.
The book was translated into all major languages, and in the United States it became the second best-selling book after the Bible
Lattitude: 42.3601° N
Longitude: 71.0589° W
Region: North America
Modern Day United States
Subjects Who or What published?
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Harriet Beecher Stowe American abolitionist an...
Objects To Whom or What was published?
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Uncle Tom's Cabin (or, Life Among the Lowly) An anti-slavery novel by...
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Attachments
Eliza tells Uncle Tom that he has been sold Full-page illustration by Hammatt Billings for the first edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). Eliza tells Uncle Tom that he has been sold and she is running away to save her child.
Events in 1852 MORE
