Uncle Tom’s Cabin: fully illustrated 1886 edition
Published in 1852, the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause and laying the groundwork for the Civil War.
Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Academy and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering African-American slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States. One million copies were sold in Great Britain. In 1855, three years after it was published, it was hailed as “the most popular novel of our day.”
Uncle Tom’s Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in The National Era, an abolitionist periodical, starting with the issue of June 5, 1851. The story became so popular that the publisher John P. Jewett contacted Stowe about turning the serial into a book.
Convinced the book would be a success, Jewett made the unusual decision for that time to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing.
This brand-new edition features:
- Exceptional typography
- Beautifully reproduced from the 1863 edition
- 12 Years a Slave by Solomon Northup
- Fully interactive table of contents
“Apostrophe’s beautifully crafted ebook classics will please fans of old and new media alike.” – Dr Matthew Rubery, BA (Texas) PhD (Harvard), Reader in 19th-Century Literature.
A SNEAK PEEK INSIDE:
“The scenes of this story, as its title indicates, lie among a race hitherto ignored by the associations of polite and refined society; an exotic race, whose ancestors, born beneath a tropic sun, brought with them, and perpetuated to their descendants, a character so essentially unlike the hard and dominant Anglo-Saxon race, as for many years to have won from it only misunderstanding and contempt.”
REVIEWS:
“Spread it round the world!” is the feeling which comes first, the instant, urgent, inevitable impulse, as one rises from the perusal of this fascinating book — and, thank God! it bids fair to become as familiar as household words, East, West, North and South.
The Independent
We know of no publication which promises to be more effective in the service of a holy, but perilous work than this.
Christian Examiner
‘The greatest work of its kind which has appeared in half a century’.
Providence Mirror
‘These volumes will be read South as well as North, and find response in every honest heart. It is a work of most absorbing interest’.
Albany Spectator
‘We wish to commend this tale to all with whom we have any influence, as one of the most admirable stories ever written’.
Evening Traveller, Boston
‘This work exhibits the most consummate skill, and will be read by almost everybody’.
Puritan Recorder, Boston
‘We welcome the work as amongst the most powerful agents that human genius has yet produced for the removal of the one fearful curse that rests upon our country’.
Christian Register, Boston
‘He who can read this greatest of all American Tales unmoved, must have been very successful in hardening his heart’.
Barre Patriot
‘The dark aspects of slavery are depicted in this work, but these are relieved by delineations of character and scenes of life and frolic, which are likely to make Uncle Tom’s Cabin a book current everywhere, South and North, To men whose study is the progress and the safe guidance of our great National Interests, this book, as a new and extensive means of influence, is not to be disregarded’.
National Intelligencer, Washington, D.C.
‘A wonderful book, teeming with thrilling anecdotes, penned to the life. We know of no story of modern times of more intensely exciting interest than ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’.
Court Journal, London
‘We have here the most singular and absorbing specimen of American Literature, which ever came to our shores. It will be read, and must be read, by everybody everywhere’.
Tait’s Edinburgh Magazine
‘We could enlarge upon this book, with an enthusiastic amplitude, but we recommend it universally, to one and to all’.
London Weekly Dispatch
‘Apart altogether from its purpose, the Novel is one of extraordinary merit; that is to say, if regarded as a work of fiction, it is pre-eminent. There is the pathos of ‘Paul and Virginia;’ there is the minuteness of observation and of structure of Dickens; and from first to last the interest never flags. There are all the marks of genius about the book. The tone in which it is written could only be dictated by largeness of heart and intellect; and altogether is one of the most remarkable books of recent times’.
London Daily News
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin is one of the most remarkable books of the age’.
New Methodist Magazine, London
‘This story is told with a spirit, vigour, and a mastery over the feelings, which cannot but both surprise and delight the reader’.
London Examiner
‘This is an admirably written work, with an equally admirable object’.
London Weekly Newspaper
‘Mrs. Stowe is a woman of great powers, and must have had unusual opportunities of observation. This book should be read by everyone’.
Hartford Mercury
‘It is a tale of harrowing interest, skillfully constructed and tastefully written’.
Worcester Herald
‘It is a work of thrilling interest, and cannot be read without enlisting the heart and judgment against a system so pregnant with calamity, ruin and woe’.
Norfolk News
‘It is a truly wonderful production, and will, we believe, do more towards ridding America of the foul stain of slavery, than has has yet been done by any other effort’.
Davenport Independent
‘This is one of the most stirring and graphic descriptions of the horrors of slavery ever published’.
Norfolk Herald
‘Let those who would grasp the polluted hand of self-styled Christians, yet uncleansed of the sin of man-selling, here read the criminality of which, by the very act, they become the participators and the perpetuators’.
Leicester Chronicle
‘It has been said of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with perfect truth, that the intense interest which it is calculated to excite, is not surpassed by any story of modern times’.
North British Mail
‘We have never read a more touching book, and we heartily commend it to all who would appreciate American slavery’.
Sheffield Times
‘The work is full of interest, and has inflicted a wound upon the infernal system of slavery, from which it will never recover’.
Brighton Herald
‘It is written in a style of deep and thrilling interest’.
Plymouth Times
‘The work is one of immense power, and we predict for it a circulation unparalled in the annals of cheap literature’.
Dover Telegraph
‘We are not surprised that Uncle Tom’s Cabin has created a powerful sensation’.
Midland Times
‘The abominations of the traffic in human beings are most vividly set forth in this work’.
Somerset Gazette
‘This is one of the most powerfully written tales we have yet met with’.
Waterford Mail
‘It is regarded as the most graphic exposure of American slavery ever published’.
Sunday-School Union