Uncle Tom’s Cabin; Or, Life Among the Lowly.

STOWE, Harriet Beecher.

$7,500.00

Item Number: 142642

Boston: John P. Jewett & Company. Cleveland: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, 1852.

First edition, first issue of Stowe’s classic American novel, widely considered the book that precipitated the American Civil War. Octavo, two volumes in the original publisher’s cloth stamped in blind with gilt titles and vignettes to the front panels, illustrated with title vignettes and six wood-engravings. BAL’s binding B (no priority). Portrait of Stowe tipped in opposite the title page of volume I. 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).