Print
Email
Look It Up
AT A GLANCE
Uncle Tom's Cabin
4 articles on Uncle Tom's Cabin
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Source: Encyclopedia of African American History, 1619-1895: From the Colonial Period to the Age of Frederick Douglass
Word Count: 1464 Includes: BibliographyGalvanized by the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, in forty installments from June 1851 to April 1852 in the abolitionist weekly the National Era, published in Washington, D.C. The story riveted thousands of readers and engendered outrage about the institution of slavery. Although the story centers on the mistreatment of the pious and wise slave Uncle Tom, many other slaves are featured in the story. The book targets even benign slave owners as partners in the crime against humanity that is slavery. Toward the end of Tom's life, his owner, Simon Legree, who specializes in cruelty, beats Tom severely because he knows that Tom has outwitted him in a matter relating to two runaway women. When the son of Tom's former master finally rescues him, Tom manages to travel only a few miles beyond the door of ...
Read full articleUncle Tom's Cabin
Source: Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience, Second Edition
Word Count: 920 Includes: BibliographyBest-selling but controversial 1852 American novel that increased worldwide sentiment against slavery. When Harriet Beecher Stowe's antislavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin was published, it was an immediate best seller, and became the most sensational and popular book of the nineteenth century. French writer George Sand described the international phenomenon: “This book is in all hands and in all journals. It has, and will have, editions in every form; people devour it, they cover it with tears.” Since then, the novel has been criticized for its stereotypical depictions of black characters, as well as its sentimentalism and moralism. But as problematic as some of the book's language and descriptions are, in the 1850s, Uncle Tom's Cabinevoked international sympathy for African American slaves. ...
Read full articleUncle Tom's Cabin
Source: The Oxford Companion to United States History
Word Count: 526(1852), antislavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896). Though Stowe famously said that “God wrote it,” she is nonetheless credited with the authorship of this best-selling work that galvanized opposition to slavery in the 1850s. Written in the aftermath of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, Uncle Tom's Cabin: or, Life among the Lowly was first serialized in the National Era (June 1851–April 1852) and then published in book form. It sold more than 10,000 copies in the first few weeks after publication and some 300,000 in the first year.Based on various slave narratives, including those of Henry Bibb and Josiah Henson, the novel primarily focuses on the title character, a slave who is sold by his owner and torn from his home and family. Tom is first purchased at the New OrleansslaveAugustine ...
Read full articleUncle Tom's Cabin
Source: The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature
Word Count: 12See Stowe, Harriet Beecher. ...
Read full article