Tom's Cabin Novel by Stowe

Tom's Cabin

Novel by Stowe

Written By:

The Editors of Enciclopedia Británica

Alternative Titles: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly”

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in full Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe, published in serialized form in the United States in 1851–52 and in book form in 1852. An abolitionist novel, it achieved wide popularity, particularly among white readers in the North, by vividly dramatizing the experience of slavery.

Harley, the slave trader, examining one of the human lots up for auction, illustration from an early edition (c. 1870) of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. © Photos.com/Thinkstock

Uncle Tom’s Cabin tells the story of Uncle Tom, depicted as a saintly, dignified slave. While being transported by boat to auction in New Orleans, Tom saves the life of Little Eva, whose grateful father then purchases Tom. Eva and Tom soon become great friends. Always frail, Eva’s health begins to decline rapidly, and on her deathbed, she asks her father to free all his slaves. He makes plans to do so but is then killed, and the brutal Simon Degree, Tom’s new owner, has Tom whipped to death after he refuses to divulge the whereabouts of certain runaway slaves. Tom maintains a steadfastly Christian attitude toward his own suffering, and Stowe imbues Tom’s death with echoes of Christ’s.

Stowe, Harriet Beecher: Uncle Tom's Cabin Angels, including Little Eva, awaiting the spirit of Uncle Tom after his death by a brutal beating, illustration from a c. 1870 edition of Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin.© Photos.com/Thinkstock

Some 300,000 copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were sold in the United States during the year after its publication, and it sold well in England. It was adapted for theatre multiple times beginning in 1852; because the novel made use of the themes and techniques of theatrical melodrama popular at the time, its transition to the stage was easy. These adaptations played to capacity audiences in the United States and contributed to the already significant popularity of Stowe’s novel in the North and the animosity toward it in the South. They became a staple of touring companies through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th.

Uncle Tom's Cabin posterPoster for a theatrical production of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1881.Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-USZC4-1298)

Stowe’s depiction of slavery in her novel was informed by her Christianity and by her immersion in abolitionist writings. She also drew on her personal experience during the 1830s and ’40s while living in Cincinnati, Ohio, which was a destination for those escaping slavery in Kentucky and other Southern states. In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she made her case against slavery by cataloguing the suffering experienced by enslaved people and by showing that their owners were morally broken. Stowe also published a collection of documents and testimony, A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1853) that she used to prove the truth of her novel’s representation of slavery.

With affection, Ruben