Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. the novel immediately provoked a storm of competing and contradictory responses among Northern and Southern readers, moderate and radical abolitionist groups, blacks and women, with regard to issues of form, genre, politics, religion, race and gender, that are still of great interest because they anticipate the concerns that vex and divide modern readers and critical constituencies. When a benevolent landowner decides to sell two slaves—Uncle Tom and Eliza—in order to raise funds, the lives of the two slaves follow divergent paths. While Eliza escapes to eventual freedom, Uncle Tom is repeatedly sold until he ends up working on the prosperous Legree plantation, where his very life becomes forfeit to his violent master. The bestselling novel and the second bestselling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible, uncle Tom’s cabin continues to remain a significant part of American literature.