Uncle Tom's Cabin: Or, Life Among the Lowly, The Splendid Edition - Hardcover

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0199841438 ISBN 13: 9780199841431

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 2011

Synopsis

When Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1852 it caused a sensation. Its antislavery position proved to be one the most powerful cultural influences behind the Civil War. By emphasizing the moral failure inherent in slavery, it helped intensify the conflict between north and south. By the end of the year it had sold over 300,000 copies in the U.S. and more than a million abroad. It went on to be the nineteenth century's worldwide bestseller.

To capitalize on the book's success the publisher released a lavishly illustrated gift version for the Christmas season. Widely known as the "Splendid Edition," the deluxe offering included over one hundred detailed engravings by Hammatt Billings, who had done six pictures for the original printing. The artfully integrated illustrations amplify the book's abolitionist ideas and capture its historical moment, lending the narrative a moving immediacy.

Reissued for the first time, this facsimile edition gives general readers the chance to experience Harriet Beecher Stowe's classic in this most revealing form. It includes a substantial introduction by Bancroft-winning historian David S. Reynolds that situates the novel within the world of ideas and images operative at the time.

Features
    Features an introduction from David Reynolds, a leading literary critic/cultural historian of nineteenth-century America
    Includes all of the original illustrations Hammatt Billings designed for the so-called "Splendid Edition" of Uncle Tom's Cabin
    Ideal edition for students of nineteenth-century American history, especially slavery and African American history, and nineteenth-century American literature

About this title

From the Publisher:

Library of Liberal Arts title.

From the Inside Flap:

Uncle Tom, Topsy, Sambo, Simon Legree, little Eva: their names are American bywords, and all of them are characters in Harriet Beecher Stowe's remarkable novel of the pre-Civil War South. Uncle Tom's Cabin was revolutionary in 1852 for its passionate indictment of slavery and for its presentation of Tom, "a man of humanity," as the first black hero in American fiction. Labeled racist and condescending by some contemporary critics, it remains a shocking, controversial, and powerful work -- exposing the attitudes of white nineteenth-century society toward "the peculiar institution" and documenting, in heartrending detail, the tragic breakup of black Kentucky families "sold down the river." An immediate international sensation, Uncle Tom's Cabin sold 300,000 copies in the first year, was translated into thirty-seven languages, and has never gone out of print: its political impact was immense, its emotional influence immeasurable.
From the Paperback edition.

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0199841438
• ISBN 13: 9780199841431
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 608
• Editor: Reynolds David S.
• Illustrator: Billings Hammatt