The Icarian

Harriet Beecher Stowe – Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Books That Killed Their Authors

On 5 June 1851, the first of 40 installments of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were published in the abolitionist weekly newspaper The National Era.

Originally subtitled “The Man That Was A Thing” and then changed to “Life Among The Lowly”, the weekly installments were published until 1 April 1852. Stowe was paid $400, about $14,954 today, for the newspaper installments.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was one of the most consequential and controversial books of its time. It remains so today. It’s influence still reverberates through both American and global culture.

Naturally, the book was very consequential for its author. So much so, that Harriet Beecher Stowe wrote “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in its entirety a second time 36 years later, as her health deteriorated and she descended into what was probably Alzheimer’s Disease.

But how did Stowe go from the massive success of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to writing her most famous work, almost word-for-word, a second time?

Some Harriet Beecher Stowe history and context:

Stowe was not a one-hit wonder. She wrote 30 books, including 20 novels and 10 non-fiction books published in her lifetime. She also published three travel memoirs, and several collections of articles and letters. She was influential both for her written work and public stances on social issues of her time.
https://www.bookseriesinorder.com/harriet-beecher-stowe/

What lit Stowe’s literary fuse in mid-life was Congress passing the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, prohibiting assistance to fugitive slaves and strengthening legal sanctions in free states against people helping escaped slaves.

Stowe was 40 when the first installment of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” appeared, but she was already well enmeshed in the pre-Civil War abolitionist movement and had written numerous articles for periodicals about a variety of subjects.

When “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was published, she and her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, a professor of languages, Biblical and sacred literature (and a librarian!), were living in Brunswick, Maine, where Calvin was teaching at Bowdoin College. The Stowes were supporters of the Underground Railroad, a network that helped runaway slaves escape to freedom. They hid several fugitive slaves in their home.

One of these fugitives was John Andrew Jackson, born into slavery on a plantation in Sumter County, South Carolina.

Jackson escaped to freedom in Canada and became an outspoken abolitionist. In 1862, while living in England, Jackson published “The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina”. In his book, Jackson wrote of hiding the Stowe’s house as he made his way to Canada.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jackson/jackson.html

“I may mention, that during my flight from Salem to Canada, I met with a very sincere friend and helper, who gave me a refuge during the night, and set me on my way. Her name was Mrs. Beecher Stowe. She took me in and fed me, and gave me some clothes and five dollars. She also inspected my back, which is covered with scars which I shall carry with me to the grave. She listened with great interest to my story, and sympathized with me when I told her how long I had been parted from my wife Louisa and my daughter Jenny, and perhaps, for ever (sic).”
Excerpt from “The Experience of a Slave in South Carolina”, page 32.
https://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/jackson/jackson.html

Stowe’s interactions with Jackson and other fugitives, as well as seeing slavery in action when she lived in the bustling river town Cincinnati, Ohio, and visited Kentucky are said to have provided her background for writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”.

A number other works and individuals also inspired Stowe.

One source was the autobiography “The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself” (1849). Henson, who escaped slavery in 1830, had lived and worked on a plantation in North Bethesda, Md. He fled to Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he helped other fugitive slaves settle.

Stowe was also inspired by the posthumous biography of Phebe Ann Jacobs, a devout Congregationalist in Brunswick, Maine. Born on a plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey, Jacobs was enslaved for most of her life, including by the president of Bowdoin College, where Stowe’s husband taught. Jacobs gained her freedom during the last years of her life and worked washing clothes for Bowdoin students.

Another source was “American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses” (1839), a book co-authored by abolitionist Theodore Dwight Weld, his wife, Angelina Grimké and her sister Sarah.

Stowe also did her own homework. She interviewed a number of people who escaped slavery.

Stowe also wrote a nonfiction companion to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” published in 1853, also by Jewett, Proctor & Worthington. She mentioned a number of these inspirations and sources in “A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

There was a large-scale campaign to discredit Snow by slave owners and traders who claimed the lives of slaves were just wonderful. This non-fiction book was intended to not only verify Stowe’s claims about slavery, but also point readers to numerous “publicly available documents” detailing the horrors of slavery.

A Runaway Hit

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” was first published as a book in two volumes by John P. Jewett & Company or Cleveland, Ohio, on 20 March 1852, with an initial print run of 5,000 copies, unusually large at the time for an author publishing their first book. Each of the two volumes included three illustrations and a title-page designed by Hammatt Billings, a noted Boston-based artist and architect.
https://blog.library.si.edu/blog/2020/09/16/uncle-toms-cabin-early-and-notable-editions/

The book was a runaway hit.

During an era where just talking about abolition could get a white man lynched in some cities and states, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” sold 120,000 copies by October 1852. Sales reached 300,000 copies by March 1853. Stow received a royalty of 10 cents per copy, $4.22 today. By May 1852, she received $4,000 ($168,962.08 in 2026) from sales of the book, according to a report in the 14 May 1852 edition of the New York Times.

The two-volume book sold in a choice of three bindings: cloth at $1.50 ($62.55 in 2026), cloth extra gilt at $2.00 ($83.40), and paper wrapper at $1.00 ($41.70 in 2026).

In late 1852, sales slowed, but Jewett published an inexpensive edition at 371⁄2 cents, around $15 today, to stimulate sales. This would be the first of many versions of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, which would remain a best seller for 30 years after its original publication.
https://utc.iath.virginia.edu/interpret/exhibits/winship/winship.html

https://www.sumnerandstillman.com/pages/books/15682/harriet-beecher-stowe/uncle-toms-cabin-or-life-among-the-lowly-in-two-volumes

Overseas sales of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” were also spectacular. But Stowe earned nothing.

In the United Kingdom, where the book was also big success, 200,000 copies were sold the first year. Within a few years, sales totaled 1.5 million copies. Stowe made no money on the sales. International copyright laws didn’t exist during that era.
https://blog.lib.utah.edu/jons-desk-uncle-toms-cabin-not-just-backwoods-book/

Stowe went on a lecture tour of Britain in 1853, in part to account for the royalties lost to a lack of international copyright laws. A fundraising effort, Uncle Tom’s Offering, was established by the Glasgow New Association for the Abolition of Slavery to help compensate Stowe.

Influence, Controversy and Consequence

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has had the kind influence equaled by few other novels.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” created a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery. A number of pro-slavery books were published in direct response to the novel.

The novel is considered a “landmark” of protest literature.

Uncle Tom’s Cabin had an “incalculable” impact on the 19th-century world and attracted the attention of many Americans.

A likely apocryphal story alludes to the novel’s influence.

When Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he allegedly commented, “So this is the little lady who started this great war.” Historians are not at all certain Lincoln actually said this. A letter Stowe wrote to her husband immediately after meeting Lincoln does not mention the comment.

Some writers credit “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: with helping to fuel the abolitionist movement by directing Northern anger at slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law. Union general and politician, James Baird Weaver, said that the book convinced him to become an abolitionist.

Frederick Douglass says he was “convinced both of the social uses of the novel and of Stowe’s humanitarianism”. During the book’s initial release, Douglass promoted it in his abolitionist newspaper The North Star.

Douglass called “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” “a work of marvelous depth and power”. But he also published criticism of the novel.

Martin Robison Delany, in a series of letters in the The North Star, accused Stowe of “borrowing (and thus profiting) from the work of black writers to compose her novel”, what today would be called cultural appropriation. Delany, a free-born black abolitionist, journalist, physician, military officer, and writer, was one of the most outspoken black critics of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” when it was first published.

Martin Robison Delany: An Extraordinary, Sometimes Contradictory, Figure

Delany also scolded Stowe for her “apparent support of black colonization to Africa”, the idea of returning freed slaves to Africa. This seems a bit contradictory, since Delany, an exponent of what would later be called black nationalism, led The National Emigration Convention held in Cleveland, Ohio from August 24 to 26 of 1854, that propsed Canada, Africa, Central America, and South America as locations for resettlement of former slaves. Delany visited Liberia, and made plans to assist Blacks in relocating there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Emigration_Convention

Delany later became part of the ecosystem of novels spawned by “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”, when he wrote “Blake; or the Huts of America: A Tale of the Mississippi Valley, the Southern United States, and Cuba”, a novel where an African American “chooses violent rebellion over Tom’s resignation.” Delany’s book was realized in part during his lifetime, but was not published as a book until the 1970s.

Stowe intended the title character, Uncle Tom, to be a noble, long-suffering Christian slave. In the book, Tom stands up for his beliefs, refusing to betray friends and family. In recent times, the name Uncle Tom has become a derogatory term for African Americans accused of selling out to whites.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s” core theme is the evil and immorality of slavery.

The style “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is written in makes it hard for modern audiences to take it seriously.

It is written in a sentimental, melodramatic style common to 19th-century novels and domestic fiction, also known as women’s fiction. This genre was was the most popular of Stowe’s time and were “written by, for, and about women”. These novels featured a writing style designed to provoke a reader’s sympathy and emotion. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” is considered a representative example of a sentimental novel.

George Orwell, in his essay “Good Bad Books”, published November 1945 in the English socialist magazine Tribune, says “perhaps the supreme example of the ‘good bad’ book is “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”. It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other.”

“I would back “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore, though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where the superiority lies,” Orwell wrote.

Negative associations related to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in particular how the novel and spin-off plays created and popularized racial stereotypes, have to some extent obscured the book’s historical impact as a “vital antislavery tool”.

Academics such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins, who study African-American history and literature, have reassessed “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” in a “serious attempt to resurrect it as both a central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/23/arts/digging-through-the-literary-anthropology-of-stowes-uncle-tom.html
(paywall)

Considered the first best-selling novel, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” influenced not only American literature, but also protest literature in general. Books owing a debt to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” include “The Jungle” by Upton Sinclair and “Silent Spring” by Rachel Carson.

Modern opinions about “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” among literary critics are as divided as opinions about it social and political significance.

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin” has been criticized as “a blend of children’s fable and propaganda” and dismissed as “a sentimental novel,” despite its significance.
https://www.thenation.com/article/archive/uncle-toms-shadow/
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2925530

Other praise the novel. Edmund Wilson wrote that “To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom’s Cabin may therefore prove a startling experience. It is a much more impressive work than one has ever been allowed to suspect.” https://books.google.com/books?id=xO23DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT28#v=onepage&q&f=false (Part I, HARRIET BEECHER STOWE)

In “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History. Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860” (1985), Jane Tompkins wrote that the novel is one of the classics of American literature. Tompkins speculates that some literary critics dismiss the book because it was too popular when first published.

Decline And A Redux

Harriet’s health declined rapidly after the death of her husband, Calvin, in 1886.

The Washington Post reported in 1888 that the 77-year-old Stowe started writing “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” over again, believing she was writing the original work.

“For several hours every day she industriously used pen and paper, inscribing passages of the book almost exactly word for word. This was done unconsciously from memory, the author imagining that she composed the matter as she went along. To her diseased mind the story was brand new, and she frequently exhausted herself with labor that she regarded as freshly created.”
–The Washington Post

Mark Twain was Stowe’s neighbor of in Hartford, Connecticut.

He recalled her last years in his autobiography:

“Her mind had decayed, and she was a pathetic figure. She wandered about all the day long in the care of a muscular Irish woman. Among the colonists of our neighborhood the doors always stood open in pleasant weather. Mrs. Stowe entered them at her own free will, and as she was always softly slippered and generally full of animal spirits, she was able to deal in surprises, and she liked to do it. She would slip up behind a person who was deep in dreams and musings and fetch a war whoop that would jump that person out of his clothes. And she had other moods. Sometimes we would hear gentle music in the drawing-room and would find her there at the piano singing ancient and melancholy songs with infinitely touching effect.”

Researchers now speculate she had Alzheimer’s disease.
https://stowecenter.org/

Harriet Beecher Stowe died on 1 July 1896, in Hartford, Connecticut. She was 85. She is buried in cemetery at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, with her husband and their son Henry Ellis.

In this series:

Karl Marx – Das Kapital: Books That Killed Their Authors #1

John Kennedy Toole – A Confederacy of Dunces: Books That Killed Their Authors #2

Charles Dickens – The Mystery of Edwin Drood: Books That Killed Their Authors #3

Jane Austen – Persuasion and Sanditon: Books That Killed Their Authors #4

 

Franz Kafka – A Hunger Artist: Books That Killed Their Authors #6

Truman Capote – Answered Prayers: Books That Killed Their Authors #7

Honoré de Balzac – The Human Comedy: Books That Killed Their Authors #8