Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly

STOWE, Harriet Beecher.

Item Number: 142375

London: Sampson, Low, Son and Company, 1853.

Early English illustrated edition of Stowe’s enormously influential work. Royal octavo, recased in the original publisher’s gilt-decorated cloth, illustrated, additional vignette title page and tissue-guarded frontispiece portrait of Stowe. In very good condition.

“In the emotion-charged atmosphere of mid-19th century America Uncle Tom’s Cabin exploded like a bombshell. To those engaged in fighting slavery it appeared as an indictment of all the evils inherent in the system they opposed; to the pro-slavery forces it was a slanderous attack on ‘the Southern way of life’… the social impact of [the novel] on the United States was greater than that of any book before or since” (PMM 332). “Within a decade after its publication Uncle Tom’s Cabin had become the most popular novel ever written by an American… there is substantial evidence that the book precipitated the American Civil War” (Downs, Books That Changed America, 108).