Uncle Tom's Cabin (The Norton Library) Format: Electronic book text

Part of the Norton Library series

The Norton Library edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin features the text of the 1852 edition, including original woodcut illustrations. An introduction by Susan M. Ryan takes a lively and incisive look at the novel’s historical and religious contexts, its political influence as well as its limits, and why Uncle Tom’s Cabin―with all its controversies―endures as an American classic.

The Norton Library is a growing collection of high-quality texts and translations―influential works of literature and philosophy―introduced and edited by leading scholars. Norton Library editions prepare readers for their first encounter with the works that they’ll re-read over a lifetime.

• Inviting introductions highlight the work’s significance and influence, providing the historical and literary context students need to dive in with confidence.
• Endnotes and an easy-to-read design deliver an uninterrupted reading experience, encouraging students to read the text first and refer to endnotes for more information as needed.
• An affordable price (most $10 or less) encourages students to buy the book and to come to class with the assigned edition.

About the Editor: Susan M. Ryan is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the University of Louisville. She is the author of The Grammar of Good Intentions: Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence (2003) and The Moral Economies of American Authorship: Reputation, Scandal, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Marketplace (2016).

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in 1811 in Litchfield, Connecticut, where her father, Lyman Beecher, was an up-and-coming Presbyterian minister. She attended Hartford Female Seminary, which was founded by her older sister Catharine, a leader in the women’s education movement. Among her other notable siblings were Henry Ward Beecher, an influential clergyman and social reformer, and the suffragist Isabella Beecher Hooker. In 1836 she married the biblical scholar Calvin Stowe, with whom she had seven children. Stowe is best known for her 1852 antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly, which became an international bestseller. She went on to write more than thirty books of fiction and nonfiction, as well as stories, essays, and poems. Stowe died in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1896.

Susan M. Ryan is Professor of English and Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs at the University of Louisville. She is the author of The Grammar of Good Intentions: Race and the Antebellum Culture of Benevolence (2003) and The Moral Economies of American Authorship: Reputation, Scandal, and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Marketplace (2016). Her current project investigates nineteenth-century Americans preoccupation with India.