Uncle Tom's Cabin: Authoritative Text, Backgrounds and Contents, Criticism

by Stowe, Harriet Beecher; Ammons, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780393963038
• ISBN10: 0393963039
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1993-11-17
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company

Summary

It was quickly translated into thirty-seven languages and has never gone out of print. The book had a far-reaching impact and deeply affected the national conscience of antebellum America. The Norton Critical Edition text is that of the 1852 book edition, published in two volumes by John P. Jewett and Company, Boston; original illustrations are included. Annotations are provided to assist the reader with obscure historical terms and biblical allusions. Backgrounds and Contexts includes a wealth of historical material relevant to slavery and abolitionism. Among the documents presented are Josiah Henson's 1849 slave narrative (named by Stowe as one of the sources for the novel); Solomon Northup's eyewitness account of an 1841 slave auction; Harriet Jacobs's narrative of her life as a fifteen-year-old slave; two epistolary accounts by ex-slave and abolitionist William Wells Brown, which document events in Uncle Tom's Cabin ; two crucial excerpts from Stowe's Key to "Uncle Tom's Cabin " which provide the real-life basis for characters and events in the novel; and accounts of Tom-Shows and the anti-Uncle Tom literature that sprang up in response to the novel's publication. Illustrative material includes slave advertisements, runaway slave posters, and illustrations for the first British edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Britain's premier illustrator, George Cruikshank, as well as popular illustrations from American editions of the novel. Criticism is arranged under two headings. "Nineteenth-Century Reviews and Reception" includes critiques by George Sand, William G. Allen and Ethiop (both from Frederick Douglass' Paper), George F. Holmes, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, among others. Twentieth-Century Criticism collects five of the best critical assessments of the novel's continuing impact on American society. With the exception of James Baldwin's groundbreaking essay, "Everybody's Protest Novel," the critical essays date from the years 1985 to 1992. Jane P. Tompkins investigates why the text was excluded from the canon for most of the twentieth century. Robert S. Levine provides an overview of the text's popular reception and influence since publication, including current critical schools and critics. Hortense J. Spillers takes a textual/linguistic view in her comparison between Stowe and Ishmael Reed as "impression points in the literary imagination of slavery." And Christina Zwarg traces the influence Stowe's feminism had on her treatment of fatherhood and its effect on the home. A Chronology of Stowe's life and work and a Selected Bibliography are also included.

Table of Contents

Preface	vii	(2)
A Note on the Text	ix	(1)
Acknowledgments	ix	(3)
The Text of Uncle Tom's Cabin
First-edition title page	xii	(1)
Preface	xiii	(2)
Table of Contents	xv
Uncle Tom's Cabin	1	(390)
Backgrounds and Contexts	391	(68)
Map: The Eastern United States in the Antebellum Period	391	(1)
Slave Sale Announcements	392	(4)
Runaway Slave Advertisements	396	(2)
Josiah Henson
Life of Josiah Henson	398	(8)
Solomon Northup
A Slave Auction Described by a Slave, 1841	406	(2)
Harriet Jacobs
The Trials of Girlhood	408	(3)
William Wells Brown
Another Kidnapping, 1844	411	(2)
The Flight of Ellen and William Craft, 1849	412	(1)
Harriet Beecher Stowe
[Letter to the Abolitionist Eliza Cabot Follen]	413	(16)
From The Key to "Uncle Tom's Cabin"	415	(12)
Uncle Tom	415	(7)
The Execution of Justice	422	(5)
Appeal to the Women of the Free States	427	(2)
George M. Fredrickson
Uncle Tom and the Anglo-Saxons: Romantic Racialism in the North	429	(10)
George Cruikshank
Illustration: Tom reading his Bible.	439	(3)
Illustration: The poor bleeding heart.	440	(1)
Illustration: Emmeline about to be sold to the highest bidder.	441	(1)
Thomas F. Gossett
Anti-Uncle Tom Literature	442	(12)
Mary C. Henderson
[Tom-Shows]	454	(2)
Tom-Show Poster	456	(3)
Criticism	459	(126)
NINETEENTH-CENTURY REVIEWS AND RECEPTION	459	(36)
George Sand
Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin	459	(4)
William G. Allen
[About Uncle Tom's Cabin]	463	(3)
Ethiop
[Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin]	466	(1)
George F. Holmes
[Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin]	467	(11)
Anonymous
[Review of Uncle Tom's Cabin]	478	(5)
Charles Dudley Warner
[Uncle Tom's Cabin a Half Century Later]	483	(5)
Frances Ellen Watkins [Harper]
Eliza Harris	488	(1)
Helen Gray Cone
[Harriet Beecher Stowe and American Women Writers]	489	(1)
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Harriet Beecher Stowe	490	(1)
G. Grant Williams
Reminiscences of the Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Her Family	491	(4)
MODERN CRITICAL VIEWS	495	(90)
James Baldwin
Everybody's Protest Novel	495	(6)
Jane P. Tompkins
Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History	501	(22)
Robert S. Levine
Uncle Tom's Cabin in Frederick Douglass' Paper: An Analysis of Reception	523	(19)
Hortense J. Spillers
Changing the Letter: The Yokes, the Jokes of Discourse, or, Mrs. Stowe, Mr. Reed	542	(26)
Christina Zwarg
Fathering and Blackface in Uncle Tom's Cabin	568	(17)
Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Chronology	585	(2)
Selected Bibliography	587