The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 18522002

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The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002

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Claire Parfait Université Paris 13, France

© Claire Parfait 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Claire Parfait has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Gower House Suite 420 Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 Hampshire GU11 3HR USA England Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Parfait, Claire The publishing history of Uncle Tom’s cabin, 1852–2002 1. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811–1896. Uncle Tom’s cabin 2. American literature – Publishing – History – 19th century 3. American literature – Publishing – History – 20th century 4. Book industries and trade – United States – History – 19th century 5. Book industries and trade – United States – History – 20th century I. Title 813.3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Parfait, Claire. The publishing history of Uncle Tom’s cabin, 1852–2002 / by Claire Parfait. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-7546-5514-5 (alk. paper) 1. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896. Uncle Tom’s cabin. 2. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896—Relations with publishers. 3. Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 1811-1896— Appreciation. 4. Authors and publishers—United States—History—19th century. 5. Literature publishing—United States—History—19th century. 6. Women and literature— United States—History—19th century. I. Title. PS2954.U6P37 2007 813’.3—dc22 ISBN: 978-0-7546-5514-5 Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall.

2007013886

Contents List of Figures List of Abbreviations Acknowledgments Introduction

vii viii ix 1

1

From Inception to Serialization “Will Writing Pay?”: Stowe’s Early Career First Anti-Slavery Writings The Inception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era The Constraints of Writing and Publishing Serialized Fiction Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a Collective Enterprise

7 7 13 15 17 21 24

2

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Contract “This Master Rejection Slip of All Time” John P. Jewett and Co. Negotiating the Contract The Quarrel

33 33 35 37 42

3

“The Story of the Age”: Advertising and Promotion Pre-Launch Campaign After Publication: The Exploitation of Sales Figures Book Reviews, Puffs, and Other Marketing Ploys Coda: Stowe and the Promotion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Prefaces and Introductions

47 47 52 60

4

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Book, 1852–1853 The Two-Volume Edition Errors, Corrections, and the Problem of the Parker Footnote The Two Editions in One Volume The “Edition For the Million!” The Illustrated Edition Coda: Editions and their Readers

67 69 73 76 80 81 87

5

Distribution and Sales, 1852–1863 Distribution Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the South

91 91 94

64

vi


Sales Figures A Surprising Hiatus Stowe’s Gains Jewett’s “Lucky Star” Sets 6

99 100 104 108

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1863–1893 I Phillips, Sampson and Co., Ticknor and Fields, and Their Successors, 1853–1878 II Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1878–1891 III Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1892–1893: New Editions and the Copyright Issue

113 113 122

7

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1893–1930 Editions with Scholarly Introductions Popular Editions Illustrations Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Advertising

153 153 160 167 173

8

Eclipse and Renaissance: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1930–2002 I Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1930–1959: A Prolonged Eclipse II The 1960s: Renaissance III 1970–2002: New Reading Guides for Uncle Tom’s Cabin

177 177 184 192

136

Conclusion Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Popular Classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin and History

203 203 204

Appendices 1 Serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era 2 American Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

207 211

Select Bibliography Index

241 257

List of Figures 1

2

3

Norton’s Literary Gazette 2/6 (June 1852). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

55

Norton’s Literary Gazette 2/12 (December 1852). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society

57

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Illustrated Edition (Jewett, 1853). Illustration by Hammat Billings. Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

85

4

Publishers’ Weekly (30 November 1878)

125

5

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Illustrated Edition (Houghton, Mifflin, 1883). Engraving after a drawing by George Thomas/T.R. Macquoid. Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

130

6

Publishers’ Weekly (29 August 1885)

133

7

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, New Holiday Edition (Houghton, Mifflin, 1892). Photogravure by Edward Windsor Kemble (from my own collection, a gift from Geneviève and Michel Fabre)

139

8 Front Cover, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Riverside Paper Series (Houghton, Mifflin, 1892). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

141

9 Front Cover, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Chimney Corner Series (New York, F.M. Lupton, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

169

10 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, color front cover (Cleveland, Arthur Westbrook, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

170

11 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, frontispiece (New York, The Federal Book Company, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

171

12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, color illustration (New York, Hurst, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

172

List of Abbreviations Institutions AAS American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA HBSC Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT HL Huntington Library, San Marino, CA HO L Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA SL Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA UVa University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, VA YL Yale University Library, New Haven, CT Web Site UVa web “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive,” directed by Stephen Railton at the University of Virginia, at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/ Others In footnotes only: CES HBS PW

Calvin Ellis Stowe Harriet Beecher Stowe Publisher’s Weekly

Acknowledgments This book marks the completion of a work which began about a decade ago as a PhD dissertation, under the kind and rigorous advisorship of Professor John Atherton, at the University of Paris 7. Many institutions provided the documents on which this work is based, as well as much-needed advice and help. I am especially grateful to researchers and staff at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, the Houghton Library at Harvard, Cambridge, the Huntington Library in San Marino, the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, the New York Public Library. The American Antiquarian Society in Worcester deserves special mention for the help and welcome which I received there every time I visited. Many other institutions in the United States and in Europe also provided invaluable help. Over the past 10 years, since the inception of this project, a number of researchers and colleagues, both in Paris and in the United States, have offered support and constructive criticism. In Paris, my thanks go especially to Marie-Françoise Cachin, Claire Bruyère, Marie-Jeanne Rossignol and Geneviève Fabre. Across the Atlantic, Michael Winship has offered useful advice and encouragement on a number of occasions. I would also like to thank Barbara Hochman for her close reading of the work. Paris 7 University gave me a sabbatical which allowed me to complete the research work, and the University of Massachusetts at Amherst invited me to spend a month as a visiting scholar in 2005. Lively discussions, in particular with Mason I. Lowance, Jr, and his students, proved to be both enjoyable and useful. I am most grateful to my family, my parents in particular, and my friends for their patience since I started working on this project. Across the Atlantic I would like to thank most especially, for their unfailing help and support, Ira Elliott, Rosy Harari, Kristen Brochmann, Kendall Thomas, and Wendy Jones. At Ashgate, Ann Donahue believed in the project from the first and provided invaluable advice and encouragement. This book would not have been possible without her help. Finally, I would like to thank Caroline Sloat, at the American Antiquarian Society, both for her continued support over the years, and for allowing me to incorporate here part of a previously published article. My “The Nineteenth-Century Serial as a Collective Enterprise: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris,” published in Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 112.1 (2002) appears here (in a modified form) courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society.


Introduction “The smoke has never cleared from around ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’” noted a New York Times critic in reference to a 1997 stage adaptation of the novel. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery bestseller has indeed been an object of controversy since it first appeared in book form in March 1852. Swaddled in over a century and a half of commentary, analysis, and polemic, as well as numerous theater and movie versions, the novel has attained the status of a cultural myth, and its title character is firmly established in the American imagination and lexicon. To this day, Uncle Tom’s Cabin remains the source of an impassioned political and literary discourse, the inspiration for theater, film, dance, and art as well as the locus of much heated debate on race relations in the United States. The history of the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been thoroughly documented, highlighting the novel’s status as both an historical benchmark and a social barometer. Countless articles and monographs have been devoted to the analysis of the various issues raised by the novel, and the work itself has frequently been adapted and rewritten. When it comes to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, rewritings (a hallmark of literary classics) frequently suggest that that the work has been found wanting, and must therefore be “corrected.” For example, in his 1990 work, Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin/The Promised Land, African-American choreographer Bill T. Jones provocatively chose Stowe’s novel as the starting point for an exploration of race, gender and faith in late-twentieth century America. The novel was made to enter into a Bakhtinian dialogue with many other texts, including but not limited to, Scripture, speeches (Sojourner Truth, Martin Luther King), plays (Amiri Baraka’s The Dutchman), and songs, all in a postmodern dialogue among different genres and times. Jones’s selection of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a subtext acknowledged the centrality of the novel to discussions of race, among other topics, while the parodic rendering of Uncle Tom’s Cabin suggested that it was no longer acceptable as a representation of African Americans or as a valued touchstone of American history. In Jones’s piece, the standard ending—the death of Uncle Tom for refusing to betray the hiding place

Ben Brantley, “Stowe’s ‘Cabin,’ Reshaped as a Multistory Literary Home,” New York Times, 12 December 1997: E3. The two most comprehensive studies of the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are Thomas F. Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture (Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1985), and Sheryl F. Savina-Snyder, “La réputation de Harriet Beecher Stowe, romancière abolitionniste, de 1851 à 1941,” unpublished PhD dissertation (Université Paris 4, 1994). For recent criticism see, among others, Mason I. Lowance, Jr, Ellen E. Westbrook, and R.C. De Prospo (eds), The Stowe Debate: Rhetorical Strategies in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1994), and Cindy Weinstein (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 2004).


of two fugitive slaves—was enacted before an alternate “correct” (that is, politically acceptable) ending was staged: the slaves refused to obey Legree’s orders, were struck down one after the other, but more slaves kept coming up and Legree was beaten by sheer numbers, even though none of the slaves raised a hand to him. This rewriting of the end of the novel, reminiscent of the twentieth-century civil rights movement, speaks to the capacity of the novel to irritate and rankle, even a century and a half after its first publication. A few years after Jones’s choreography, a stage adaptation, entitled, after the novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life among the Lowly, was performed in New York in December 1997 and January 1998. Intertextuality and polyphony were also distinctive features in this adaptation, which mixed excerpts from Uncle Tom’s Cabin with scenes from a half-dozen nineteenth- and twentieth-century theatrical adaptations of the novel, as well as extracts from slave narratives. The play also included a debate between critics of the novel, and featured extracts from George Sand’s 1852 favorable review and James Baldwin’s 1949 scathing attack. The use of so many differing texts in two works which employed Stowe’s novel as a subtext hinted that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was no longer “just” the novel which bears this name, but the product of countless stage and movie adaptations, reviews, and scholarly works. To some extent, the text itself has disappeared beneath all the other texts which have superseded it. Whether in the popular imagination or in scholarly works, an “innocent” approach to Uncle Tom’s Cabin has become utterly impossible. The reception of Stowe’s first novel throws light upon its popularity and controversial character. It does not, however, tell the whole story. The present study aims to tell another part of this story by looking at Uncle Tom’s Cabin from the perspective of book history. The list of editions placed in Appendix 2 hints at the long, intricate, and intriguing publishing history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the United States. What this history is, how it can help account for the enduring popularity and the polemical character of the novel are the two central issues this work addresses. In her article on the successive editions of Susanna Rowson’s novel Charlotte Temple, Cathy N. Davidson notes that “an overt and covert cultural agenda, an ideological subtext, is encoded in the writing, publishing, reprinting, binding, titling, retitling, pictorializing, advertising, distributing, marketing, selling, buying, reading, interpreting, and, finally, institutionalizing (within literary criticism and “I then take the liberty to insert a ‘correct’ ending—the one we would like to have seen”: Bill T. Jones, with Peggy Gillespie, Last Night on Earth (New York, Pantheon Books, 1995), p. 211. Uncle Tom’s Cabin or Life among the Lowly, adapted by Floraine Kay and Randolph Curtis Rand, directed by Randolph Curtis Rand, 4–20 December 1997 and 6–11 January 1998, Greenwich House Theater, New York. Works of art should naturally be included in the list. For a recent example, see the discussion of the controversial use of characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin by artist Kara Walker, in Michael D. Harris, Colored Pictures: Race and Visual Representation (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2003), Chapter 6.

Introduction

historiography) of any text ….” Davidson presents scholars with the daunting and tantalizing invitation to produce an all-encompassing history of a text. This work does not pretend to be exhaustive; neither does it claim to address all the issues raised in Davidson, nor examine all the facets of the “communications circuit” established by Robert Darnton (which includes author, publisher, printer, shipper, bookseller, and reader). Of the participants in the culture of the book, the general reader, as opposed to a professional critic or reviewer, certainly represents the most complex and elusive challenge. Between the ideal reader constructed by the author, the sort who follows the reading guides provided in the text and paratext, the target reader imagined by the publisher, and the actual reader who disregards the instructions given by author and publisher—the “poaching” reader, in the words of Michel de Certeau—the truth of the reader remains difficult to apprehend. Fragmentary evidence only is available for a study of “popular” readings of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whether in the form of testimonies, letters, private diaries, or marginalia.10 In the various libraries and institutions which hold Stowe’s letters, the readers’ presence usually transpires only through the writer’s replies to enquiries and requests for autographs. Little has remained of the abundant correspondence which Stowe received on the subject of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from American readers, but also, as she once claimed, “from people all over the known world,” including readers from China, Japan, Australia, and various European countries.11 These letters have apparently disappeared, save for the few which Stowe printed in an introduction to an 1879 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “The Life and Times of Charlotte Temple: The Biography of a Book,” in Cathy N. Davidson (ed.), Reading in America: Literature and Social History (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989), pp. 157–79. The first American edition of Charlotte Temple was issued in 1794 and the novel was extremely popular in the United States. Robert Darnton, “What is the History of Books?”, in Davidson (ed.), Reading in America, pp. 27–52. See Ronald J. Zboray’s discussion of the “fictive” reader, born of the misconception of nineteenth-century publishers about their public, Ronald J. Zboray, A Fictive People: Antebellum Economic Development and the American Reading Public (New York, Oxford University Press, 1993). Michel de Certeau, L’invention du quotidien; 1: Arts de faire (Paris, Gallimard, Collection Folio Essais, 1990, 1st edn 1980), p. 251. 10 For a few studies of individual readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see D.D. Hall, “A Yankee Tutor in the Old South,” The New England Quarterly, 33/1 (March 1960): 82–91; Ronald J. Zboray and Mary Saracino Zboray: 1) “Books, Reading, and the World of Goods in Antebellum New England,” American Quarterly, 8/4 (December 1996): 587–622; 2) “Reading and Everyday Life in Antebellum Boston: The Diary of Daniel F. and Mary D. Child,” Libraries and Culture, 32/3 (Summer 1997): 285–323. Barbara Hochman is currently at work on a book-length study of the place of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the culture of reading, between the 1850s and the early twentieth century. 11 Stowe’s novel was a global phenomenon; the scope of this work, however, does not allow for an analysis on that scale. Harriet Beecher Stowe to Mr Hunt, 22 June (no year mentioned), Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor,


Rather than a history of the readings proper of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, therefore, this work aims to relate the history of the ways the novel was presented to succeeding generations of Americans. This type of study is only possible for works which endure. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a massive bestseller when it first appeared but, as we know, best-sellerdom does not by itself ensure the survival of a text. Mexican writer Carlos Fuentes recently noted that bestseller lists of the last 50 years represent, with few exceptions, “a dismal cemetery of dead books.”12 The same remark can just as easily apply to many if not most nineteenth-century bestsellers. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has endured, even if the list of its American editions hints at a tumultuous history in which the novel’s popularity, as well as its critical standing, has waxed and waned. The publishing history of the novel allows us to map the changing relevance of the text over the last century and a half, and examine the part played by authorial and editorial policies in keeping it alive. As D.F. McKenzie has written, “change and adaptation are a condition of survival, just as the creative application of texts is a condition of their being read at all.”13 Furthermore, Roger Chartier has reminded us that “forms produce meaning, and that even a fixed text is invested with new meaning and being (statut) when the physical form through which it is presented for interpretation changes.”14 To some extent, the analysis of what Gérard Genette calls the paratext of a work—that is everything in a volume that is not the text proper—helps account for the continued life of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.15 New prefaces, new presentations, and new publishers’ blurbs among other elements, provide fresh reading guides. At the same time, they also justify a new edition of a work, and the need for the creation of a new paratext. The paratext plays an important role in the elaboration of new meanings of any literary work and, taken as a whole, the paratext of a hundred and fifty years of American editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin forms a fascinating narrative. This narrative helps explain why the novel remained meaningful to an American society in which slavery was—chronologically at least—growing increasingly remote. In addition, the material form and the paratextual elements of the editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin provide insights into changing criteria of literary judgment. The paratext reflects the shifting popularity and evolving critical assessment of the work. It also attempts to exert an influence of its own, for publishers and preface writers participate in what Pierre Bourdieu calls “the field of cultural Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Stowe explains that “driven by the everlasting necessity of doing more than I can I have ever deferred collecting and arranging the various memorials of that sudden and wonderful outburst of Anti Slavery zeal ….” 12 Carlos Fuentes, “A la louange du roman: le triomphe de l’imagination critique,” Le Monde Diplomatique (December 2005): 28–9. My translation. 13 D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts (Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1999, 1st edn 1986), p. 61. 14 Roger Chartier, “Labourers and Voyagers: From the Text to the Reader,” in David Finkelstein and Alistair McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader (London, Routledge, 2002), pp. 47–58. 15 Gérard Genette, Paratexts: Thresholds of Interpretation (Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Introduction

production.” In this “site of struggles” for “cultural legitimacy,” they too contribute to assigning value to a work and shaping its reception.16 By enshrining the work in a collection of classics, for instance, and/or including scholarly introductions, prefaces, afterwords, bibliographies, and the like, publishers send clear messages as to the status of a given text—or at least the status they intend to confer on it. Because Uncle Tom’s Cabin deals with slavery, the paratext of its succeeding editions also speaks to the way American society has read and re-read its own history over the past century and a half. The “primary evidence” for this “history of meanings” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin of course lies in the volumes themselves.17 Davidson notes that each version of the dozens of editions of Charlotte Temple “contained its own story about authorship, readership, and publishing in America.”18 The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford holds a bewildering array of editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, testifying to the long history of the novel, the multiplicity of habiliments provided for the same text, and the manifold possible readings and uses of the book. From classic to popular editions, from weighty, luxurious and profusely-illustrated volumes to paper-covered pamphlets, some large, some pocket-sized, the material form in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been offered to readers also tells part of the story of American publishing.19 This study is based primarily on the examination of American editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in various libraries and institutions in the United States, England, and France. Primary sources also include Stowe’s correspondence, publishers’ archives, and periodicals. The scope of this work unfortunately does not allow for a detailed textual examination of each edition. At the same time, a number of points—Stowe’s preface and the concluding chapter of the novel, as well as epigraphs and footnotes, for example—were carefully scrutinized in order to draw informed conclusions about the editorial respect (or lack thereof) shown to the text and authorial paratext by succeeding publishers. The first five chapters of this work focus on the early history of the novel, specifically, the period 1851–1853. Chapter 1 briefly retraces the inception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and then examines its serialization in The National Era (June 1851–April 1852), including the interactions between author, editor, and readers in the creation of the novel. Chapter 2 takes up the complex issue of the negotiations between Boston publisher John P. Jewett and the writer’s husband, Calvin Stowe. The analysis of the subsequent dispute between the author and her publisher provides additional insight into the often-problematic relationships between author and publisher in the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter 3 examines Jewett’s impressive marketing and 16 Pierre Bourdieu, “The Field of Cultural Production,” in Finkelstein and McCleery (eds), The Book History Reader, pp. 77–99. 17 McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, p. 61. 18 Davidson, “The Life and Times of Charlotte Temple,” p. 157. 19 I have deliberately left out of this study editions aimed at juvenile readers, both for reasons of space, and because these editions entail an adaptation of the text together with specific marketing approaches.


promotional campaign, before and after publication in March 1852, while Chapter 4 looks at the object of Jewett’s efforts, namely, the three different editions he published between March 1852 and December 1853. Chapter 5 investigates the distribution of the novel, and its sales figures. Strangely enough, the publishing phenomenon was short-lived, and the novel was not reprinted between the spring of 1853 and the fall of 1862. The chapter concludes with an examination of the causes of this surprising hiatus. In Chapter 6, the publishing history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin during the three decades before its copyright expired in 1893 speaks to the complex and multi-faceted interaction between author and publisher in the survival of a work. The 1892 conflict over the copyright of the novel, which led its publishers, Houghton, Mifflin, to initiate an investigation carried out via coded telegrams, reads very much like an espionage story, while also illustrating the financial stake Uncle Tom’s Cabin represented for the publishers. Chapter 7 examines the two series of editions of the novel between 1893 and 1930: “popular” editions published in the series or “libraries” which proliferated at the end of the nineteenth century, and editions with scholarly paratext, such as the memorial editions launched after Stowe’s death in 1896. Chapter 8 brings us to the present times: after a prolonged eclipse between 1930 and 1960, Uncle Tom’s Cabin acquired a new relevance during the civil rights movement. Changing interpretations and new reading protocols are some of the reasons why Stowe’s first novel has not only endured but remained vibrant, and why it continues to raise critical issues touching on literary merit, aesthetic values, historical “truths,” and of course the complex relations between black and white Americans.

Chapter 1

From Inception to Serialization “Will Writing Pay?”: Stowe’s Early Career Yes, writing will pay, just as any profession will pay, after you have learned it … Young writers must begin by giving away their writing while they are learning to write. In fact, some who are reaping large incomes now from writing began by sending articles to magazines, with no other expectation of remuneration than the insertion of them.

Stowe was essentially quoting from her own experience when, over a decade after the resounding success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she provided this answer to the queries of would-be women writers in Hearth and Home, a magazine she was co-editing with writer Donald G. Mitchell. The increasing division between the domestic (female) and public (male) spheres linked to industrialization and the concomitant decline of the economic role of women in the household, which Ann Douglas calls “feminine disestablishment,” meant that the only jobs considered socially acceptable for middleclass women were connected to education—teaching—or those that could be carried out within the confines of the home: sewing or writing. In her largely autobiographical novel, Ruth Hall, Stowe’s former student Fanny Fern (the pen name of Sara Willis Parton) explores the above three avenues of employment before settling on a successful career as a writer. Harriet Elizabeth Beecher, born in 1811, daughter of the famous New England Congregationalist minister Lyman Beecher and sister of educator Catharine Beecher, was educated at the Litchfield Female Academy, and later at her sister’s Female Seminary in Hartford, Connecticut, where she also began a career as a teacher. Stowe taught in Hartford until 1832, the year Lyman Beecher took most of the family to Cincinnati, where he had accepted the position of Head of Lane Theological Seminary.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, “Can I Write?”, Hearth and Home, 1/3 (9 January 1869): 40–41. Emphasis in original (always the case in this work, unless noted otherwise). Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture (New York, Doubleday, Anchor Books, 1988, 1st edn 1977); Mary Kelley questions the “supposed decline in female economic roles and status” and contends that at least some women enjoyed greater job opportunities, as evidenced by the growing numbers of female teachers and writers: Mary Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage: Literary Domesticity in Nineteenth-Century America (New York, Oxford University Press, 1984), pp. 142–3. Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall: A Domestic Tale of the Present Time (Penguin Classics, 1997, 1st edn 1855).


Stowe taught in Catharine’s new school in Cincinnati until her marriage with Calvin Stowe, a professor of biblical literature at Lane Seminary, in 1836. In 1833, Stowe authored a textbook entitled Primary Geography for Children. If this first published writing was initiated by Catharine, who had long complained about the lack of good geography textbooks, Stowe’s literary apprenticeship proper took place under the auspices of the Semi-Colon Club. A social and literary club founded in Cincinnati in the late 1820s, it included both men and women. The club met once a week to hear and discuss the mostly-anonymous submissions of its members, and the evenings usually closed with a dance. Stowe submitted her essays and sketches to the Semi-Colon, which provided her with the first of innumerable periodical publications, in the form of the Western Monthly, edited by Judge James Hall, who was also a club member. Caroline Lee Hentz, yet another Semi-Colon member and also a contributor to the Western Monthly, was to produce one of the numerous pro-slavery fictional answers to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (The Planter’s Northern Bride, 1854). In 1834, the Cincinnati weekly Chronicle, also published by a member of the Semi-Colon Club, began to reprint Stowe’s essays and sketches from the Western Monthly, and in 1835 she started writing for The Evangelist (New York), a religious periodical, which often reprinted pieces from the Chronicle. The circulation of articles and stories from one periodical to another was extremely common and represented one way for writers to become, if not wealthy, at least better known, as the author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to explain to aspiring women writers in Hearth and Home in the late 1860s; although she quoted Hawthorne as a model, her own case could have served just as well to illustrate her point: A young man (or woman), unknown, and without patronage or means of putting himself forward, writes a sketch or article, and sends it to a paper. If there is anything in it, he hears from it. Somebody is pleased, and lets him know it. The piece, perhaps, is copied

For Stowe’s biography, see Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (Oxford University Press, 1994). Primary Geography for Children, On An Improved Plan. With Eleven Maps and Numerous Engravings, by C. and H. Beecher, Principals of the Western Female Institute (Cincinnati, Corey and Fairbanks, 1833). That Stowe was its sole author clearly appeared in an 1855 new edition of the work as First Geography for Children (Boston: Phillips, Sampson; New York: J.C. Derby). Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 36. On the Semi-Colon and the way “parlor literature” influenced Stowe’s writing career, see Joan Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chapter 8; see also her “Parlor Literature: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Question of ‘Great Women Artists,’” Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 17/2 (Winter 1992): 275–303, and Nicole Tonkovich, “Writing in Circles: Harriet Beecher Stowe, the Semi-Colon Club, and the Construction of Women’s Authorship,” in Catherine Hobbs (ed.), Nineteenth-Century Women Learn to Write (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995), pp. 145–75.

From Inception to Serialization

into another paper, into a third; by and by, it goes traveling round the country. The paper he sent it to, seeing that it takes, writes for more of the same sort.

While Stowe had started writing for pleasure, she continued to do so in order to supplement her husband’s income. Between 1836 and 1851, when she began work on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe bore seven children—one of them, little Charley, succumbed to cholera in 1849. Calvin’s salary, which decreased in the late 1830s as a result of both the 1837 financial crisis and problems at Lane Seminary, was insufficient to cover all household expenses as well as domestic help, which itself represented a hefty portion of the overhead of the household. In 1837, for instance, Stowe spent $220 on a wet nurse and a servant, 20 per cent of her husband’s annual salary.10 To provide additional income, Stowe wrote for periodicals, for giftbooks, or annuals, that is elegantly-bound collections of poems and sketches, ornamented with engravings, which became the rage in both England and the United States in the 1820s.11 That she wrote for money was unambiguously stated in her private correspondence. In 1838, she wrote her friend Mary Dutton, “if you see my name coming out everywhere—you may be sure of one thing, that I do it for the pay.” Stowe had decided to become a professional writer, and had no doubt of success. She evidently had little difficulty reconciling her activity as a writer and her socially-prescribed duties as a homemaker. She rejected the conventions of her time (by refusing to become, in her own words, “a mere domestic slave”) and the letter to Mary Dutton conveys her dislike for domestic responsibilities. At the same time, she justified her writing career on the grounds that it allowed her the means by which she could best provide for her family, a concern that fitted perfectly into the cult of “true womanhood.”12

Harriet Beecher Stowe, “How May I Know that I Can Make a Writer?”, Hearth and Home, 1/6 (30 January 1869): 88. For an analysis of the implications of the free circulation of foreign and American magazine writing, see Meredith L. McGill, American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, 1834–1853 (Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003); Melissa J. Homestead discusses the way Fanny Fern turned the practice to her advantage, in American Women Authors and Literary Property, 1822–1869 (Cambridge University Press, 2005), Chapter 4. In an 1852 letter to Eliza Cabot Follen, Stowe explained that the Lane Seminary funds were invested in mercantile houses and banks which “either failed or suspended payment, & our yearly income was reduced to a mere pittance”: Harriet Beecher Stowe (from now on, HBS in notes) to Eliza Cabot Follen, letter printed in Joan Hedrick (ed.), The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader (Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 71–6. 10 Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 115, 136. 11 On annuals and giftbooks, see Isabelle Lehuu, Carnival on the Page: Popular Print Media in Antebellum America (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 2000), Chapter 4. 12 HBS to Mary Dutton, letter printed in Jeanne Boydston, Mary Kelley and Anne Margolis, The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women’s Rights and Woman’s Sphere (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1988), pp. 67–8.

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Between 1833—when both her geography textbook and the first contribution to the Western Monthly were published—and this 1838 letter, Stowe had turned from a timid literary amateur apprentice into a budding professional writer. Far from opposing his wife’s schemes, Calvin encouraged her to write, and even went so far as to suggest the name she should sign to her writings: […] drop the E out of your name, which only encumbers it and stops the flow and euphony, and write yourself only and always, Harriet Beecher Stowe, which is a name euphonious, flowing, & full of meaning; and my word for it, your husband will lift up his head in the gate, and your children will rise up and call you blessed.13

Calvin’s support reflects the pride he felt in his wife’s talents as an author. Comparing her to Swedish writer Frederika Bremer, whom he had just met, he told his wife, “You are a beauty to her, & can write better into the bargain, besides giving birth to so many bright, smart children!”14 Calvin also believed in the positive influence his wife’s writings could exert on her contemporaries; in reference to a magazine to which she contributed, he assured her, “You have it in your power, by means of that little magazine, to form the mind of the West for the coming generation.”15 Finally, Calvin, who at first viewed his wife’s earnings as “pocket money,”16 gradually came to rely on his wife’s earnings. When he was offered a position at his alma mater, Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, in 1850, he discussed the matter with his wife. The salary he was offered was low, $1,000 a year and, as he explained to Reverend Professor Upham, their expenses would exceed his income by $200 or $300. His wife could make it up by writing but she did not want to feel obliged to: “No—and she shall not feel so, while God gives me strength and opportunity to earn a living for my family.”17 Hardly a year later, Calvin had changed his mind; the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he wrote Reverend Justin Edwards, “has so changed my prospects in respect to Seminary matters, that another professorship with higher salary is not necessary to myself personally, as it was a year ago.”18 Uncle Tom’s Cabin had turned “pocket money” into a steady income that would increasingly supplement Calvin’s salary. Encouraged by Calvin,19 Stowe continued to write in the 1840s, because money was constantly in short supply. She sometimes chafed under the obligation to earn, 13

CES (will from now on stand for Calvin Ellis Stowe) to HBS, 30 April 1842, quoted in Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 138. Until then, Stowe sometimes appended her full name (Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe) to her writings. 14 CES to HBS, 26 November 1850, Collection Acquisitions, Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, CT, hereafter HBSC. 15 CES to HBS, 19 May 1842, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. 16 CES to Hepzibah Stowe, 27 October 1847, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. 17 CES to Rev. Professor Upham, 19 February 1851, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. 18 CES to Rev. Justin Edwards, 12 April 1852, quoted in Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 223 . 19 Calvin’s enlightened attitude towards a working spouse was not necessarily shared by his contemporaries. Lydia Sigourney’s husband tried to get her to stop writing: see Judith


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and Calvin’s letter to Professor Upham had been prompted by a letter from his wife in which she reassured Calvin that she could easily make up the few hundred that they would need to supplement his salary from Bowdoin and yet, as she told him, “[…] I don’t want to feel obliged to work as hard every year as I have this—I can earn two hundred by writing but I don’t want to feel that I must & when weary with teaching children tending baby buying provision settling bills cutting out clothes still to feel that I must write a piece for some paper ….”20 Stowe wrote the letter at a time when she had almost single-handedly organized the house in Brunswick, had been delivered of her seventh and last child, and was, with her sister Catharine, comanaging a small school under her own roof. Calvin had stayed behind in Cincinnati, waiting until a replacement could be found for him at Lane Seminary. Stowe’s letter is the thinly-veiled reproach an overworked woman—a housewife doubling as a professional writer—addresses to her husband. Stowe was gradually to become the chief breadwinner for the family, then its sole earner after Calvin retired in the early 1860s. She was fully aware of her responsibility, occasionally complained—“I work like a dray horse”21—and often worried that sickness might prevent her from writing, as she explained to one of her daughters in 1863: “… if my health fails, all will fail. For your father depends so on me for his very life and all the affairs are in my hands that if my health gives out there will be a general break up.”22 At the same time, and for much of her writing career, Stowe depended upon her husband for advice and encouragement. While not all nineteenth-century women writers took up the pen to earn money— Catherine Sedgwick for one did not undertake a writer’s career out of financial necessity—Stowe’s case is fairly representative. Widows such as Fanny Fern, married women such as E.D.E.N. Southworth (whose husband had abandoned her), married women whose husbands earned an inadequate income (Stowe, Caroline Lee Hentz, Lydia Maria Child), single women whose families could not support them but who, on the contrary, sometimes had to support their relatives (Maria McIntosh, the Warner sisters, and later Louisa May Alcott), are just a few of the many examples of women who turned to writing to create or complement an income.23

Fetterley (ed.), Provisions: A Reader from 19th-Century American Women (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1985), pp. 105–7. 20 HBS to CES, 21 January (1851), Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. 21 HBS to James T. Fields, undated letter, FI 3965, James T. Fields Collection, Huntington Library, hereafter HL. 22 HBS to Hatty, 5 October 1863, Folder 125, Beecher-Stowe Family Papers, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, hereafter SL. 23 On the role of economic necessity in the career of a number of nineteenth-century women writers, see Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage (in particular p. 145 forward), and Susan Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business: American Women Writers in the Nineteenth Century (Chapel Hill, The University of North Carolina Press, 1990).

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Stowe is also representative of many nineteenth-century women writers in that she began her career by writing for periodicals, giftbooks and annuals.24 Women writers were not the only ones to sell their productions to magazines and papers at a time when the explosion of periodicals opened up new venues for American writers: William Gilmore Simms, Timothy Shay Arthur and Edgar Allan Poe, to name just a few, were to be found in Godey’s Lady’s Book, beside Lydia Sigourney, Ann Sophia Stephens, Caroline Lee Hentz and Stowe herself.25 Apart from her geography textbook, Stowe’s first book publication was, like that of many of her fellow magazinists, a collection of tales and sketches that had already appeared in magazines.26 Fifteen of them were published in 1843 by the New York firm of Harper and Brothers, under the title The Mayflower; or, Sketches of Scenes and Characters Among the Descendants of the Pilgrims. An 1842 letter from Stowe to her husband hints that the agreement signed for the book was not very advantageous for the writer, who nevertheless adopted an upbeat tone: “For a second volume I shall be able to make better terms.”27 The Mayflower was reprinted by the Harpers at least once, in 1846, a sure sign that the work did not do too poorly.28 By 1850, when she moved to Brunswick, Stowe was confident that she could command a fair amount for her contributions. Once again pressed for money, she wrote to her sister-in-law, “I have written to several editors to engage pieces for next winter & if my confinement & its troubles were not to intervene should just walk strait thro easy as could be for I know that there are many who want what I can give […] If you therefore can send 24 Private Woman, Public Stage, p. 19. Stowe, Sara Willis Parton (Fanny Fern), E.D.E.N. Southworth, Maria Cummins and Caroline Lee Hentz are among the writers Kelley examines in her study. 25 For the explosion of periodicals in the first half of the nineteenth century, see John Tebbel and Mary Ellen Zuckerman, The Magazine in America 1741–1990 (Oxford University Press, 1991), p. 8; also see the introduction to Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (eds), Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995); for the contributors to periodicals, see Frank Luther Mott, A History of American Magazines, vol. 1: 1741–1850 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1938), pp. 496–9. 26 As Nina Baym notes in Woman’s Fiction, trying to succeed financially with long fiction was a risky proposition in the 1830s and 1840s; although some women did publish novels, many wrote short pieces, which later appeared in collections: Nina Baym, Woman’s Fiction: A Guide to Novels by and about Women in America, 1820–1870 (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1978), pp. 63–7. The recycling of short writings was also practiced by men, from Poe and Hawthorne to the then-famous magazinist Nathaniel Parker Willis, Fanny Fern’s brother, who often “repackaged” the same works under new titles, just as the editors of giftbooks and annuals sometimes re-issued the same works with a few variants and altered titles: see Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties (New York, D. Appleton-Century, 1940), pp. 284–5. 27 Quoted in Charles Edward Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Compiled From Her Letters and Journals (Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1889), pp. 103–4. 28 The American Antiquarian Society (Worcester, MA), hereafter AAS, holds a copy of the 1846 reprint.


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me by drafts or in some safe way that amount [$100] I’l [sic] pledge a fine christmas [sic] story against it ….”29 Very little of this self-confidence was in evidence in a letter which Stowe sent a few months later to Sarah Josepha Hale, the editor of Godey’s Lady’s Book, who wanted to include Stowe in her Woman’s Record; or, Sketches of all Distinguished Women, from “The Beginning” till A.D. 1850.30 In answer to her query, Stowe described her life as “uneventful and uninteresting,” and emphasized her role in the “duties of the family.” The Mayflower, she told Hale, was her only published book.31 The dichotomy between Stowe’s private correspondence and the image that she wanted to show the public, in keeping with society’s insistence that “true women” privilege family matters over financial considerations, was to crop up time and time again during her long career. First Anti-Slavery Writings The genesis of Stowe’s anti-slavery feelings can be traced to her childhood. She was nine years old at the time of the Missouri Compromise, and her father’s preachings exerted a lasting influence on her with respect to slavery.32 Stowe’s first, albeit indirect, writing on the subject was a defense of freedom of speech when the presses of James Birney, the editor of the anti-slavery weekly the Philanthropist, were twice damaged by a Cincinnati mob, in the summer of 1836. The second attack on the presses was followed by the destruction of the homes of a number of black families living in Cincinnati. In a letter signed “Franklin” and addressed to the editor of the Cincinnati Journal and Luminary—her brother Henry Ward Beecher at the time—Stowe unequivocally denounced mob violence and reminded her readers that a free press was guaranteed by the Constitution. During the same period, Stowe rued that her being a woman prevented her from taking up arms and contributing to the defense of Birney’s offices. Yet even if Stowe opposed slavery and was already wondering in the 1830s what could be done to put an end to the institution, she also felt that the abolitionist position was too extreme.33 29

HBS to Sarah Buckingham Beecher, 3 June (1850), Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 198. 31 HBS to Sarah Josepha Hale, 10 November (1850?), HM 24166, James T. Fields Collection, HL. Hedrick notes that Stowe’s answer is that of a woman who had written nothing for the past five years (notably because of sickness and childbearing) and who actually saw herself primarily in terms of her role as wife and mother (Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 198). On the other hand, Stowe’s answer speaks to the public persona she wanted to convey, an image at odds with that revealed in her private correspondence. 32 See HBS to Wendell Phillips, 23 February 1853, bMS Am 1953 (1183), Houghton Library, Harvard University, hereafter HO L This and all documents in the Houghton Library are cited by permission of the Houghton Library. 33 Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 104–9; E. Bruce Kirkham, The Building of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Knoxville, Tennessee, The University of Tennessee Press, 1977), pp. 30–34. The letter is printed in Hedrick’s Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader, pp. 49–51. 30

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It would take almost a decade before Stowe openly voiced her opposition to slavery, with a first sketch published in The New-York Evangelist of 2 January 1845. “Immediate Emancipation: A Sketch,” signed “Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe,” occupied the first two columns of the front page of the religious weekly. Stowe claimed to have had personal knowledge of the incidents, which she had merely “clothed in a dramatic form, to present them more vividly to the reader.” Set in Cincinnati, “Immediate Emancipation” tells the story of a slave called Sam who, brought by his master to the city, takes advantage of Ohio as a free state to claim his freedom. His master is talked into giving him his freedom as well as that of his wife and children. Stowe concluded by emphasizing the need to denounce the “system” instead of assailing the “persons” who, as she had demonstrated, could be enlightened and generous.34 In this first anti-slavery story, Stowe put in place a number of the strategies that she was to use in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, notably the effort to avoid antagonizing Southerners by personal attacks, the attempt to convince her audience of the truth of the facts related, and the use of fiction to make the picture more vivid. Stowe’s second anti-slavery writing was directly prompted by the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law that Congress was then discussing. Part of a compromise between the North and the South, it involved the entire country in the system of slavery by making it a duty for Northerners to help recapture runaway slaves. Citizens of the free states were exposed to heavy fines and jail terms if they failed to assist in the recovery of fugitives. The story, entitled “The Freeman’s Dream: A Parable,” and signed “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” was published in August 1850 in The National Era, the anti-slavery weekly that would the following year begin serializing Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A very short tale printed on the first page of the weekly, “The Freeman’s Dream” is a stern warning aimed at those who heed human laws (and fail to help fugitive slaves) rather than the word of Jesus. It heralds the ominous last words of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, in which the entire nation is threatened with God’s wrath if the sin of slavery is not eradicated; like the novel, this short parable calls for civil disobedience, and exposes those churches that defend slavery.35 Stowe’s third short writing against slavery, “The Two Altars,” appeared in two parts in The New-York Evangelist in June 1851, when Uncle Tom’s Cabin had just begun its run in The National Era. It denounces the contradiction between the founding principles of the nation and the lack of liberty endured by part of its population, in a tone that ranges from bitter irony to pathos. “The Two Altars” unambiguously exposes the North’s complicity in the institution, justified by the hollow argument that this is needed to preserve the Union.36

34

“Immediate Emancipation: A Sketch,” The New-York Evangelist (2 January 1845). Reprinted in Hedrick’s Reader, pp. 52–6. 35 “The Freeman’s Dream: A Parable,” The National Era (18 August 1850). Reprinted in Hedrick’s Reader, pp. 57–8. 36 “The Two Altars; or, Two Pictures in One,” The New-York Evangelist (12 and 19 June 1851).


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The Inception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Stowe’s anger toward the Fugitive Slave Law is abundantly documented. In a letter to her sister Catharine about “the miserable wicked fugitive slave business,” she noted, “Why I have felt almost choked sometimes with pent up wrath ….”37 To Calvin in Cincinnati, she wrote from Maine that only lack of time prevented her from publicly expressing her feelings.38 Her desire to denounce the law received a further impetus when Gamaliel Bailey, the editor of The National Era, provided her both with the additional incentives of money and an outlet for her pent-up anger. She still lacked material, however, and asked her husband in Cincinnati to provide information on “the capabilities of liberated blacks to take care of themselves,” as she was considering a sketch on the subject for the Era.39 She also requested information from her brother Henry Ward Beecher: Bailey sent me a check the other day for $100 & wanted me to furnish as much as I chose & what I chose for it next year. Can you furnish me suggestions & materials for some graphic sketches that shall have some bearing on the slave power & principle—something to make slavery a picture instead of a political idea. Would to God I could do something even the humblest in this cause. I have actually & really found tears dropping on my pillow when I have thought of the wrongs & sorrows of those oppressed ones […] Can you send me any thing that will give me the argument that Christians use who defend obedience to the slave law. I might perhaps feel more charity if I saw the other side—at present I cannot see or imagine what plausible thing can be said—except that might makes right.40

In another letter to Calvin, Stowe emphasized the financial incentive, writing that just as she was becoming discouraged, thinking that the editor of the Era “was overstocked with contributors & would not want my services another year & lo he 37

HBS to “Dear Sister Kate,” undated letter, Harriet Beecher Stowe Microfilm Collection, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library, hereafter YL. The letter is printed in Hedrick’s Reader, pp. 61–2. 38 HBS to CES, undated letter (December 1850): Note added as a postcript to a letter from Henry Ellis Stowe to his father Calvin (Collection Acquisitions, HBSC). Stowe’s family urged her to write against the Fugitive Slave Law (see Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 206–7). Her brother Edward Beecher had been involved in the anti-slavery movement since the murder of abolitionist editor Elijah Lovejoy in 1837, and Henry Ward Beecher wrote eloquent editorials against the Fugitive Slave Law in The Independent (New York). 39 HBS to CES, 27 January (1851), quoted in Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 206. In the last chapter of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “Concluding Remarks,” Stowe presents, “on the authority of professor C.E. Stowe,” a series of examples of successful emancipated slaves in Cincinnati (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Penguin Classics, 1986), pp. 627–8. All subsequent references to the text of Uncle Tom’s Cabin will also be to this edition. 40 HBS to Henry Ward Beecher, 1 February 1851, HBS Microfilm Collection, YL. A greater familiarity with the arguments employed by the defenders of the system would indeed allow Stowe to dismantle them one by one in Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

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sends me a hundred dollars & ever so many good words with it.”41 Some twenty years later, Stowe revealed how inextricably entwined the two incentives, indignation and money, were in the inception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: On looking back to the time when ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ came forth, I see myself then a woman with no particular capital of reputation, driven to write then as now by the necessity of making some income for family expenses. In this mood, with a mind burning with the wrongs of slavery, I undertook to write some loose sketches of slave life in the ‘National Era’, and out of that attempt grew ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’42

Stowe’s early career closely parallels that of her contemporaries, at least in respect to her reasons for writing and choice of publications, as well as the genre of much of her early production, namely sketches, temperance tales and other short writings. However, in the 1840s and early 1850s, few white writers, whether men or women, dared tackle the subject of slavery. When a May 1852 meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society celebrated female anti-slavery writers, it mentioned only two names beside that of Stowe, Grace Greenwood and Lydia Maria Child.43 Greenwood wrote tales and articles for periodicals, including The National Era, and Child had published in 1833 An Appeal in Favor of That Class of Americans Called Africans, an essay that dealt a lasting blow to her reputation. Stowe was aware of the dangers posed by writing on the topic, both because she was a female writer—politics was not considered a fit subject for a woman—and because she felt it might endanger her sanity. Anger and a sense of urgency prevailed, however. As she explained to Bailey, the editor of The National Era: Up to this year I have always felt that I had no particular call to meddle with this subject, and I dreaded to expose even my own mind to the full force of its exciting power. But I feel now that the time is come when even a woman or a child who can speak a word for freedom and humanity is bound to speak. The Carthagenian women in the last peril of their state cut off their hair for bow and strings to give to the defenders of their country, and 41

HBS to CES, undated letter (January 1851?), Collection Acquisitions, HBSC.

42 HBS to Mr Howard, one of the editors of the Christian Union, February 1870, quoted

in Annie Fields, Life and Letters of Harriet Beecher Stowe (London, Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1897), p. 327. A further motivation might have been the more or less unconscious need to come to terms with the pain of the death of her infant son in 1849; in her 1852 letter to Eliza Cabot Follen (see note 9), Stowe explains that after Charley’s death, which made her understand how a slave mother could feel when separated from her child, “I felt I could never be consoled for it, unless it should appear that this great crushing of my own heart might enable me to work out some great good to others.” She goes on to say that much of what is in Uncle Tom’s Cabin “had its root in the awful scenes & bitter sorrows of that summer.” 43 Account of a meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 27 May 1852. This article, as well as a wealth of documents on the editions, illustrations, reception, etc. of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, can be found on “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture: A Multi-Media Archive,” directed by Stephen Railton: http://www.iath. virginia.edu/utc/, University of Virginia web, hereafter UVa web.


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such peril and shame as now hangs over this country is worse than Roman slavery, and I hope every woman who can write will not be silent.44

Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era The National Era was launched in 1847 as the organ of the American and Foreign Antislavery Society. Gamaliel Bailey, who had been associated with Birney’s The Philanthropist in Cincinnati since the mid-1830s, edited the new Washington-based weekly, before becoming both its proprietor and general editor.45 An eclectic periodical that described itself as “an Anti-Slavery, Literary, & Political Newspaper,”46 The National Era was composed of four large pages, with seven columns to a page. Every week, its readers were treated to a miscellany of poems, short and long fiction, domestic and foreign political and literary editorials and news, sometimes in the form of letters from correspondents or reprints from other papers. Other regular features included articles on science, “Domestic Markets” (which listed the price of beef, cotton and other goods), and announcements of the arrival of steamers. Advertisements were located on the far-right-hand columns of pages 3 and 4, and they called the reader’s attention to such diverse products as books and pamphlets, clothing, daguerreotypes, drugs, or railroads. Lawyers, physicians, and grocers advertised alongside patent agencies, schools, hospitals, and water cures.47 The publishing history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin begins with its serialization in The National Era. As Laurel Brake, Bill Bell and David Finkelstein have noted, serialization creates “a multivalent text, constructed not only by the ‘author,’ but by the other contributors and editors, as well as the readers of the publication in which the work appears.”48 The publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era indeed illustrates the complex relationships between writer, reader, and serial editor. It also speaks to the development of serialization in the American periodical press in the mid-nineteenth century. Patricia Okker has established that serial fiction in the United States began at the end of the eighteenth century, when Jeremy Belknap’s The Foresters appeared in the Columbian Magazine between 1787 and 1788. However, the history of serialized fiction in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century remains to be told.49 In America’s Continuing Story, Michael Lund argues that serialized fiction really took off after 1850, when American literature gained a

44

HBS to Gamaliel Bailey, 9 March (1851), printed in Hedrick’s Reader, p. 66. Bailey and The National Era, the best source is Stanley Harrold, Gamaliel Bailey and Antislavery Union (Kent, Ohio, The Kent State University Press, 1986). 46 The National Era, 4 December 1851: 2. 47 See, for instance, the advertisements in the number dated 7 August 1851. 48 “Introduction,” Laurel Brake, Bill Bell, David Finkelstein (eds), Nineteenth-Century Media and the Construction of Identities (New York, Palgrave, 2000), p. 5. 49 Patricia Okker, Social Stories: The Magazine Novel in Nineteenth-Century America (Charlottesville, The University of Virginia Press, 2003), Chapter 2. 45 On

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truly national audience thanks to the development of major literary periodicals.50 As in England and France, the rise of serialization in the United States corresponded with a prodigious growth in the number and circulation of periodicals. Fiction was rightly considered as a way to attract a larger audience.51 Long before The Galaxy (New York) declared in 1869 that “the serial novel has become a prime necessity for the popular magazine,”52 Gamaliel Bailey, the editor of The National Era, had become aware of readers’ taste for fiction. As a result, Bailey began to publish an increasing amount of fiction in The Philanthropist during the early 1840s. He pursued this tactic in his new paper, even if he was also aware that many in his audience objected to the presence of fiction in the columns of an antislavery publication.53 Before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, two novels had been serialized in the Era, both from the pen of E.D.E.N. Southworth, a writer who had until then contributed short stories to the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, a family-oriented literary magazine. She then continued writing for The National Era when it absorbed the Baltimore weekly in 1847.54 Her first novel, Retribution, appeared in 15 installments, between January and April 1849.55 It was followed by The Mother-In-Law: A Story of the 50

Michael Lund, America’s Continuing Story: An Introduction to Serial Fiction, 1850– 1900 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1993), p. 25. 51 For England see, among others, Linda K. Hughes and Michael Lund, The Victorian Serial (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1991), and Graham Law’s Serializing Fiction in the Victorian Press (New York, Palgrave, 2000). For France, see among others Lise Queffélec, Le roman-feuilleton français au XIXe siècle (Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1989). 52 Article reprinted in Lund, America’s Continuing Story, pp. 128–34. 53 According to Lewis Tappan, Bailey put stories in the Era “just as parents put pills into preserves for their children.” Lewis Tappan, quoted in an account of a meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 27 May 1852. UVa web. On Era readers’ reactions to fiction, see Amy M. Thomas and Alison M. Scott, “The Power of Serialized Fiction in Nineteenth-Century America: A Case Study of E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Early Career, 1846–1856,” a paper presented at the conference on Serialized Fiction in Europe and the United States, Paris, December 2004; French translation by M.-F. Cachin in Au bonheur du feuilleton: naissance et mutations d’un genre (Etats-Unis, France, Grande-Bretagne, XVIIIe–XXe siècle), Marie-Françoise Cachin et al. (eds), Paris, Créaphis, 2007, pp. 113–24. Thomas and Scott note that an additional advantage to publishing fiction in the Era was to “allow the paper to find its way into ‘circles’ where its anti-slavery message would not otherwise be welcome ….” 54 “This arrangement [the purchase] admirably served to secure to the Era a circulation in Southern communities where the Visiter had already found its way, and where it would otherwise have been difficult to introduce a paper which was notoriously the central organ of Abolitionism”: footnote pp. 746–7, “A Pioneer Editor,” unsigned article, The Atlantic Monthly (17/104, June 1866): 743–51. 55 Much like Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Southworth had begun Retribution as a short tale, and had not intended it to turn into a novel: Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage, p. 160. On Southworth and the problems caused by the length of her productions, see Amy M. Thomas and Alison M. Scott, “The Hidden History of The Hidden Hand: A Case Study of


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Island Estate, a much longer novel since it ran from November 1849 to July 1850, some thirty installments. That Bailey had no idea how long this novel would be when it started is evidenced by a note printed several times in The National Era in the early weeks of serialization. The novel, Bailey told his readers, would run “through several successive numbers of the paper, till completed.”56 Two numbers of the Era appeared without an installment in January 1850, and on 24 January, Bailey inserted the following note: “Mrs. Southworth’s story is again interrupted this week. Next week it will be resumed, and thence continued without interruption till completed.”57 Beyond illustrating the constraints that serial writing exerted on a writer, the example of The Mother-in-Law is significant because—and this would be the case for Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well—neither author nor editor at first knew what the final length of the novel would be. The terse note that Bailey produced after one of several missed installments stands in stark contrast to the way he would soon address similar occasions in the serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As Amy Thomas and Alison Scott have noted, by the time Uncle Tom’s Cabin began its run in The National Era, Southworth’s fiction had prepared the ground by making the weekly’s audience used to and perhaps addicted to its fiction.58 No doubt Bailey’s experience with Southworth also paved the way for the peculiar difficulties encountered by an editor who published serialized novels that had not been completed before they began to appear in his periodical. That Bailey allowed at least some of his contributors considerable leeway is revealed by Stowe’s letter to her brother, and confirmed by the editor himself, in an account of the serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that he wrote in 1853, and which was printed in The Atlantic Monthly of June 1866, a few years after Bailey died in 1859: “In the beginning of the year 1851, as my custom has been, I sent remittances to various writers whom I wished to furnish contributions to the Era … Among these was Mrs. Stowe. I sent her one hundred dollars, saying to her that for that sum she might write as much as she pleased, what she pleased, and when she pleased.”59 Bailey did not specifically have in mind contributions on slavery. Indeed, Stowe had published “The Freeman’s Dream” in The National Era, but this anti-slavery parable had been followed with three sketches on completely unrelated topics printed in the weekly between November 1850 and January 1851.60 Stowe’s letter to her brother Henry clearly shows that at the beginning of February 1851, the writer was considering slavery as the subject of a few “graphic sketches.” When, in an often quoted letter, Stowe wrote to Bailey in March of the same year, she explained,

19th-Century American Conceptions of Authorship, Literature, and Publication.” I am grateful to Alison Scott for allowing me access to this unpublished paper. 56 See, for instance, The National Era, 13 December 1849: 199. 57 The National Era, 24 January 1850: 14. 58 Thomas and Scott, “The Power of Serialized Fiction.” 59 “A Pioneer Editor”: 748. Bailey’s account is dated 27 May 1853, a little over a year after the completion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Era. 60 See Kirkham, The Building, pp. 63–4.

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The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002 I am at present occupied upon a story which will be a much longer one than any I have ever written, embracing a series of sketches which give the lights and shadows of the ‘patriarchal institution’ written either from observation, incidents which have occurred in the sphere of my personal knowledge, or in the knowledge of my friends. I shall show the best side of the thing, and something faintly approaching the worst […] my object will be to hold up in the most lifelike and graphic manner possible slavery […] There is no arguing with pictures, and everybody is impressed by them, whether they mean to or not. I wrote beforehand because I know that you have much matter to arrange, & thought it might not be amiss to give you a hint. The thing may extend through three or four numbers. It will be ready in two or three weeks.61

When, on 8 May 1851, Bailey announced “A New Story by Mrs. Stowe,” he told his readers to expect a story similar in length to Retribution. That he mentioned Retribution rather than The Mother-in-Law reveals that at this time, neither author nor editor knew what s/he was in for with respect to the final length of Stowe’s serial. It also indicates that between March (when Stowe sent Bailey her letter about her project), and May (when Stowe’s work was announced in the columns of the Era), further letters had been exchanged between the writer and the editor.62 Stowe had revised the initial length of the project: from three or four numbers of the weekly, the new serial was now to occupy four or five times as many. The actual start of publication, announced for 22 May, was deferred another two weeks, as if Bailey were trying to build expectations, while at the same time making sure that his readers would renew their subscriptions so as not to miss any part of the story (readers were enticed to do so, for instance, on 8 May: “Mrs. Stowe is one of the most gifted and popular of American writers. We announce her story in advance, that none of our subscribers, through neglect to renew their subscriptions, may lose the beginning of it”).63 On 22 May, Bailey told readers that he had received the first two chapters, but that publication would not start for another two weeks, and on 29 May he reassured readers that the first chapter would indeed appear the following week. As we know, and as the table of installments (Appendix 1) makes clear, serialization extended over 44 weeks, or 41 if we exclude the three weeks in which the Era appeared without the serial. When Uncle Tom’s Cabin first appeared on 5 June 1851, Stowe 61

HBS to Gamaliel Bailey, 9 March (1851), Hedrick’s Reader, p. 66. To my knowledge, only two letters remain extant: the copy of Stowe’s letter of March 1851 (see previous note) and the letter in which Stowe tells Bailey the price at which she estimates the worth of her serial: HBS to Dr. Bailey, 18 April (1852); bMS Am 1569.7 (596), HO L. That there had so far been no encounter between the two is evidenced by Stowe’s opening of that second letter, in which she says that though she has never seen Bailey, she thinks of him as a friend. 63 According to Kirkham, another possibility is that the publication was deferred while Stowe was taking out a copyright (The Building, p. 70). The title of the work was received by the District Clerk Office of Maine on 12 May 1851 (Calvin E. Stowe and Harriet Beecher Stowe Versus F.W. Thomas [Philadelphia, B. Mifflin, Printer, 1853], p. 24). By contrast, none of Stowe’s three short anti-slavery writings bears a mention of copyright. 62


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had altered the subtitle, from “The Man That Was a Thing” (announced in May) to “Life Among the Lowly,” a change that shifts the focus from the specific category of slaves to the universal one of the poor and downtrodden.64 The Constraints of Writing and Publishing Serialized Fiction What influence, if any, did Bailey exert on the serialization and the text of the novel itself? If we are to believe the editor, he “read two or three of the first chapters, to see that everything was going on right, and read no more then.”65 Bailey’s confidence in the writer is in keeping with his custom of sending his contributors checks to encourage them to write whatever they pleased. The editor may well have exaggerated the freedom he granted to authors, however. For instance, although he defended Southworth against the attacks from readers who disapproved of fiction in the columns of the Era, or objected to the morality of Southworth’s characters, he did not hesitate to cut entire pages of Retribution.66 That Bailey took a keen interest in Stowe’s serial is suggested by the many notes and rejoinders he appended to readers’ letters during the serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Unless more of the Bailey-Stowe correspondence is unearthed,67 we may never know Bailey’s full influence on the serial and its author. Indirect evidence suggests, however, that author and editor each tried to gain the upper hand with respect to the division of chapters in the weekly. The installments, like the chapters, vary widely in length, sometimes occupying as little as a column and a half (Chapter 3), sometimes as many as five columns (Chapter 16), and Stowe missed three episodes in the course of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She had, until then, only produced short sketches, and writing a full-length

64 Although

Stowe has left no record of the reasons that led to this change, the new and final subtitle would ensure the relevance of the novel in countries in which slavery had been abolished, as well as in the United States after the enactment of the 13th Amendment, which freed the slaves. 65 “A Pioneer Editor”: 748. The task of reading and occasionally dividing the chapters may have been undertaken by one of Bailey’s assistants. 66 For Bailey’s defense of Southworth, see Thomas and Scott, “The Power of Serialized Fiction.” Southworth’s complaint about Retribution is quoted in Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage, pp. 160–61. Southworth refers to her “editor,” without naming Bailey, and in this case too, it is possible that one of the Era’s subordinate editors may have been responsible for the deletions. 67 According to Bailey’s account in “A Pioneer Editor,” the letters were to be handed to J.E. Snodgrass, formerly editor and proprietor of the Baltimore Saturday Visitor, who then served as correspondent and publishing agent to the Era. Snodgrass intended to use the correspondence in a planned biographical sketch of Harriet Beecher Stowe, a project later abandoned. “A Pioneer Editor” does not explain why the project was discontinued. See “A Pioneer Editor”: note pp. 746–7, and p. 749.

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novel, together with meeting a weekly deadline clearly presented a challenge.68 In addition to providing a weekly installment, Stowe had to send her manuscript from Maine in time for it to reach the Era, in Washington, DC, several hundred miles away. Writing a serial required time, therefore, as well as discipline. Time was in short supply, especially during the first few months of the serialization. Stowe was kept quite busy by her usual tasks at home, to which was added the supervision of a small school Catharine and she had set up in the writer’s new home in Brunswick.69 The same constraints that Stowe felt—those which translated into missed episodes and a wide variety in the length of chapters—inevitably had consequences on the weekly that published the serial. On 21 August 1851, instead of the ususal installment, readers were given the following explanation: “Chapter XII of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ reached us at too late an hour for insertion this week. Mrs. Stowe having requested that it should not be divided, our readers may look for the entire chapter in the next Era.” Bailey was alluding to the division of Chapter 9 into two installments, published on 24 and 31 July respectively, a division most probably prompted by the late arrival of the manuscript, as another note from the editor on 30 October indicates: “MRS. STOWE’S STORY—We regret exceedingly that the nineteenth chapter of Mrs. Stowe’s story did not reach us till the morning of the day on which the Era goes to press, and after all its matter, except one column, was set up. It shall appear next week.” The explanation also introduced readers to the mysteries and demands of periodical publication; the editor left several columns open for the weekly installment, but if it reached him late, and the space proved insufficient, he had no choice but to split the episode. In similar circumstances, editors sometimes cut a few paragraphs, without necessarily asking the author leave to do so. This occurred in 1853 when Charles Briggs, one of the editors at Putnam’s Monthly, deleted a page and a half from the last installment of Edmund Quincy’s Wensley when he realized that it could not fit into the space reserved for it.70 Stowe followed the serialization of her story in the Era, and did not hesitate to assert her prerogative as author to insist that the integrity of each chapter be respected. Yet as the table of installments reveals, in spite of his initial deference to Stowe’s wishes, Bailey again began to divide chapters in October, and he did so more and more frequently as Uncle Tom’s Cabin drew to a close.71 The table of installments 68 On the constraints of writing for weekly publication, see Graham Law, Serializing Fiction, pp. 184–5. 69 Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 220–21. 70 Ezra Greenspan, “Addressing or Redressing the Magazine Audience: Edmund Quincy’s Wensley,” in Price and Smith (eds), Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 133–49. 71 The chapters are usually cut at the end of a scene, with three exceptions: 1) Chapter 26 is interrupted during the scene when Eva on her death bed gives away curls of her hair to the slaves who surround her; at this point, the reader can be in no doubt that Eva will die. This ending prolongs what is already a protracted death scene, in the best Victorian tradition; 2) in Chapter 28, the installment ends in the middle of the conversation between St. Clare and Ophelia;


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also tells us that Bailey often printed two chapters in the same number of the weekly, especially in the last month of the serialization, as he had done at the very beginning, when he had received the first two chapters together. This suggests that, first, Stowe was providing him with more material because she was able to devote more of her time to the task. Indeed, from the end of September 1851, Catharine undertook to relieve her sister of at least part of her domestic obligations: “At 8 o clock we are thro’ with breakfast & prayers & then we send off Mr. Stowe & Harriet both to his room at the college. There was no other way to keep her out of family cares & quietly at work & since this plan is adopted she goes ahead finely.”72 Calvin was to present quite a different picture of the writing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, however: Some of the chapters were written in my study at the College, a few at the house of Mr. Professor Repton (a neighbour and friend of ours) some of them over the cooking-stove in the kitchen, while directing a very poor cook in the preparation of dinner; but most of them at the table in the school-room, with the children round her …73

Catharine’s presence made it possible for Stowe to accompany her husband to Andover in February 1852, and to remain there until she had completed the novel.74 The increasing occurrences of chapter divisions and the publication of the last 14 chapters in only nine weeks may also be due to the editor’s concern that the last installments would not appear too late after the publication of the novel in book form. Bailey was aware of the impending date of publication, which he announced in the Era, and had authorized the publisher, John P. Jewett, to issue the work on 20 March, some 10 days before the last installment appeared in the weekly.75 There was nothing unusual in a serial being published in book form before it had completed its run in a and 3) Chapter 40 is cut barely two pages before the end of the chapter, and the installment ends on Tom’s prophetic, “I can die” (p. 582). In her Social Stories, Okker examines Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Southworth’s The Hidden Hand before concluding that dramatic moments occur in the middle rather than at the end of installments and that “cliff-hangers” were not a prerequisite to magazine novels in the US (pp. 18–19). 72 Letter quoted in Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 221. For the cooperation between the two sisters during the writing of the novel, see Kathryn Kish Sklar, Catharine Beecher: A Study in American Domesticity (New York, W.W. Norton, 1976, 1st edn 1973), Chapter 16. 73 Letter from Calvin Stowe, printed in an introduction used in several British editions of the novel. See, for instance, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co., Run and Read Library, Popular Illustrated Edition, undated, ca. 1857), p. v. 74 “Aunt Harriet is in Andover and will not be home until her book is done.” Kate B. Perkins to “My Dear Father” (Thomas Perkins), 29 February 1852, Katharine S. Day Collection, HBSC. Calvin had accepted two positions, one in Brunswick and one in Andover, while still teaching at Lane Seminary in Cincinnati, where he stayed until March 1851. He taught in Brunswick from May to September 1851, then in Andover. See Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 207–8. 75 In the Era dated 1 April 1852, an editorial note on the second page read: “With our consent, the Boston publishers issued an edition of five thousand on the 20th of March ….”

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periodical.76 It is more than likely, however, that Bailey wished to provide his readers with the last installment as soon as possible after the book came out. A variety of reasons might account for Bailey’s disregard of Stowe’s wish not to have the chapters divided. In the interplay between writer and editor, the editor obviously had the upper hand, yet Bailey’s weekly provided Stowe with a congenial environment, and his and his readers’ encouragements of the writer played a role in giving final form to the novel, particularly its length. Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a Collective Enterprise As Laurel Brake notes, authors “write within codes of discourse, of the kind of piece they are writing […] and of the particular journal they are writing for.”77 The National Era was much more moderate in its anti-slavery stance than William Lloyd Garrison’s The Liberator. Unlike Garrison and other abolitionists, Bailey wanted to avoid antagonizing slaveholders. Stowe, who had long harbored the same concern—as her 1845 “Immediate Emancipation” reveals—seems to have fallen in effortlessly with the editorial slant of the Era, and her novel perfectly fitted the Era’s policy.78 The growing interest in Uncle Tom’s Cabin is reflected in letters printed in the Era. During its run, eight reader letters appeared in the weekly, at irregular intervals. The first was printed in July 1851, the second in August, another two in October, one in November, and the last three in January 1852. With the exception of a letter from Era contributor Grace Greenwood, the correspondence is either unsigned or simply

76 See

Michael Lund, America’s Continuing Story, pp. 29–30. Laurel Brake, “The ‘Trepidation of the Spheres’: The Serial and the Book in the Nineteenth Century,” in Robin Myers and Michael Harris (eds), Serials and Their Readers, 1620–1914 (New Castle, DE, Oak Knoll Press, 1993), pp. 83–101. 78 Susan Belasco Smith has analyzed how Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “one part of a strong program undertaken by the National Era to expose the scandal of slavery in American society in a variety of ways.” Susan Belasco Smith, “Serialization and the Nature of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in Price and Smith (eds), Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America, pp. 69–89. Patricia Okker notes the inevitable mixture of consonance and dissonance in a periodical composed of many different voices, sometimes competing instead of complementing one another (Patricia Okker, Social Stories, pp. 23–8). According to Barbara Hochman, Stowe’s novel subtly challenged and modified the Era’s habitual norms for fiction. Before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, slavery was rarely taken up in the Era’s fiction, which was mainly of the moral type. Stowe’s novel “ushered religious doubt, political conflict, and the problem of human rights into installment fiction.” Barbara Hochman, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era: An Essay in Generic Norms and the Contexts of Reading,” Book History 7 (2004): 143–69. Kirkham discusses the composition and sources of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Chapters 4 and 5 of The Building. On the serialization of the novel, see also Forrest Wilson, Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1941), Chapter 2, and Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chapters 18 and 19. 77


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bears an initial. The letters afford interesting insights into the initial reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the anti-slavery weekly.79 In the Era of 13 November 1851, a letter expressed a very clear wish: “Please signify to Mrs. Stowe that it will be quite agreeable to the wishes of very many of the readers of the Era for her not to hurry through ‘Uncle Tom.’ We don’t get sleepy reading it.” The editor immediately reassured the reader: “When Mrs. Stowe commenced her admirable story, we did not suppose, nor did she, that it would run through so many numbers as it has already done. She will take good care not ‘to hurry through it,’ but will complete what has been so well begun.” The desire for the story to continue must have been mentioned frequently in the letters, since it was alluded to again, just two weeks later, in another note from the editor: “Our subscribers in renewing their subscriptions are unanimous in praise of this admirable production. They are not anxious to see it closed very soon.”80 Readers wanted the story to go on because it was a gripping narrative81 that provoked a strong emotional response (“Some of the passages … go straight down into the depths of the soul, stirring up its purest, best emotions”82). From the “thousands of testimonials” Bailey claimed to have received,83 most of those he chose to print emphasized the emotional appeal of the narrative and also expressed a firm conviction that Uncle Tom’s Cabin would, as one reader put it, “do more good to the anti-slavery cause than a score of ordinary volumes.”84 Grace Greenwood wrote of the warm welcome accorded the novel among Era readers while “S.E.M.” reported from Illinois that Uncle Tom’s Cabin “is read with interest by persons heretofore violently opposed to everything of an Anti-Slavery nature, and is more or less enlisting their sympathies and removing their prejudices, more especially among the young.”85 If this letter implied that the impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was particularly felt among the young, another letter, apparently from a 79

The readers’ letters were usually printed on the last two pages of the journal, while the editorial notes bearing on Uncle Tom’s Cabin were generally located on the second page. 80 The National Era, 13 and 27 November 1851. It is possible that Bailey wrote the readers’ letters himself, of course, in order to promote Uncle Tom’s Cabin and with it The National Era. However, the increase in the number of subscribers to the weekly does indicate an unusual degree of interest in Stowe’s serial, which might well have translated into mail addressed to the writer or, more probably, to the editor. 81 When Stowe visited Switzerland in 1853, maids at an inn begged her to write another novel which, like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, would occupy the long winter evenings. Annie Fields, Life and Letters, p. 203. 82 The National Era, 28 August 1851. 83 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The National Era, 1 April 1852. 84 The National Era, 28 August 1851. 85 The National Era, 2 October 1851 and 29 January 1852. Even a Kentucky man, presumably an abolitionist, praised the weekly and the serial, concluding “And the voices of free men, everywhere, cry to the fair authoress, ‘Write!’” The National Era, 22 January 1852. Among the various correspondents, only one vouched for the truth of Stowe’s portraits of slaves, explaining that he had “resided many years among slaves,” and was therefore familiar with “their habits, thoughts, feelings, and language.” He had not, he wrote, been able to “detect a

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Quaker, most probably a woman, told Bailey of its influence on women: “None of thy numerous contributors, rich and varied as they have been, have so deeply interested thy female readers of this vicinity as this story of Mrs. Stowe has thus far done, and promises to do.”86 An instance of family reading was provided by a New York State reader: “Weekly, as the Era arrives, our family, consisting of twelve individuals, is called together to listen to the reading of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ This, probably, is all the comment necessary on the acceptability of Mrs. Stowe as a writer ….” The writer, a seminary instructor, also praised the weekly, the perusal of which he found “really refreshing” after an arduous week.87 Stowe may have had this letter in mind when, on taking leave of her readers after the last installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she remarked, “The thought of the pleasant family circles that she [the author] has been meeting in spirit weekly has been a constant refreshment to her, and she cannot leave them without a farewell.”88 What we might call a community of interests brought readers, editor, and writer together around Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This appears not just in the reader mail but also in the evolution of the editorial notes in the paper. The case of the three missed installments is particularly significant in that regard. To mark the first of these, Bailey printed a rather dry note, explaining that the manuscript came in too late for inclusion in that week’s issue. The second note, a few months later, was more apologetic. The third was a profuse apology: “We regret, as much as any of our readers can regret, that Mrs. Stowe has no chapter in this week’s Era. It is not our fault, for up to this hour we have nothing from her. As she is generally so punctual, we fear that sickness may have prevented.”89 Bailey obviously expected his readers would be angry with, or at least disappointed by, the absence of their favorite serial and seems to have chosen to deflate their response by presenting himself as just another reader who followed the story week after week. Voicing concern over the writer’s health allowed the editor to deflect any potential impatience with her or the publication. Bailey devoted a number of editorial notes to the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, occasionally appended rejoinders to letters, and often relayed readers’ questions to the writer.90 When the Era’s subscribers asked him if Uncle Tom’s Cabin would be published in book form, Bailey directed the question to the writer: “A note from the single mistake in her story in any of these respects” (Letter signed J.D.L., The National Era, 13 November 1851). 86 “A Word of Commendation,” The National Era, 17 July 1851. 87 The National Era, 22 January 1852. 88 This farewell to the reader was appended to the last installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in the Era of 1 April 1852. Stowe particularly insists on her young readers (“In particular, the dear little children who have followed her story have her warmest love”), who in future will hopefully “remember and pity the poor and oppressed.” 89 The National Era, 18 December 1851, note reprinted in Kirkham, The Building, p. 129. 90 See for instance, the Era dated 4 September and 27 November 1851, 1 and 29 January 1852.


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author touching these points might be of service.”91 The columns of the paper thus became the locus of a conversation carried on between reader, editor, and author (the question was answered two weeks later). The editor acted as a sort of middleman between the writer and his audience. By printing subscriber notes of encouragement to the writer and adding his own, Bailey provided a nurturing environment for the story during its publication. This doubtless encouraged the writer to continue against the wishes of her publisher. According to Stowe’s 1879 introduction to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, John P. Jewett, who, as Era readers were informed on 18 September 1851, was to publish the serial in book form, wrote to her “expressing his fears that she was making the story too long for a one-volume publication.”92 The publisher, the writer tells us, worried that a twovolume book on such an unpopular subject as slavery might not sell. Nevertheless, it is doubtful that Jewett’s concern focused on the number of volumes as such. Indeed, in mid-nineeteenth-century America, what William Charvat calls the “two-volume strait jacket” was no longer a requirement, and novels as different in length as The

91 The question was first raised in a letter printed in the Era dated 28 August 1851; in the issue of 4 September, the editor noted that he received letters by every mail on that subject. This clearly demonstrates an awareness on the part of readers that serial publication is by nature transient. The desire to see Uncle Tom’s Cabin acquire some kind of permanent and set form was also expressed by one reader who, struck by the graphic qualities of the scene describing Uncle Tom writing a letter to Chloe while Eva looks over his shoulder (Chapter 19), suggested it as a fit subject for a painting, and “a suitable embellishment” to the novel in book form. “G” had been struck by the contrast between “the golden-haired, sinless child,” and “the dark-browed, single-minded Tom” (The National Era, 30 October 1851). This scene was not selected for illustration in Jewett’s 1852 editions, but it was to appear as a vignette on the cover of the 1879 edition brought out by Houghton, Osgood and Co. 92 “Introduction,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Boston, Houghton, Osgood and Co., 1879, reprinted in a facsimile of the “Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe,” AMS Press, 1967; the page numbers refer to the latter edition), p. lx. Some scholars claim that Bailey asked his readers whether the story should be brought to a speedy end or be allowed to continue its course: see John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 1, The Creation of an Industry 1630–1865 (New York, R.R. Bowker, 1972), p. 426, and Frank Luther Mott, Golden Multitudes: The Story of Best Sellers in the United States (New York, Macmillan, 1947), pp. 116–17. I was unable to find a note to that effect in the Era. According to publisher J.C. Derby, Henry Ward Beecher, whose Lectures to Young Men was published by Jewett, was asked by the latter to write to his sister: J.C. Derby, Fifty Years among Authors, Books and Publishers (New York, G.W. Carleton and Co., 1884), pp. 457–58. This account is borne out by H.W. Beecher himself who, in a speech delivered at Stowe’s birthday party in 1882, stated: “[…] John P. Jewett […] said that the book must be limited to one octavo volume. Such was the low estate of anti-slavery literature that it was not believed an anti-slavery book of more than one volume would find readers. I thought so and wrote a most persuasive letter to her to kill off Uncle Tom quickly, and to give the world the book in one volume, if she expected it to be read”: see The Atlantic Monthly Supplement, “The Birthday Garden Party to Harriet Beecher Stowe,” The Atlantic Monthly (50/298, August 1882): 1–16.

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Scarlet Letter and Moby Dick were each published in one volume.93 Jewett himself was later to bring out Uncle Tom’s Cabin in two one-volume editions: a high-priced, profusely-illustrated one as well as an inexpensive paper-covered edition. The problem more probably lay in the fact that Jewett had been stereotyping Stowe’s story since September 1851, as a note from Bailey to Era readers on 18 September indicates. Stereotyping was costly and therefore generally used only for works likely to go through several printings.94 According to E. Bruce Kirkham, therein lay the real cause of Jewett’s problem with the length of the manuscript: the longer the work, the more expensive the stereotyping, and of course there was no way the publisher could be sure the work would sell. In addition, the contract was not signed before March 1852, and Stowe could have changed publishers until that date, thereby leaving Jewett with expensive and useless stereotype plates on his hands.95 Stowe advanced various reasons for the final length of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but the encouragements of Era readers and of its editor certainly played a role in her continuing to write against the wish of her publisher.96 Stowe acknowledged the important part played by readers, as well as the link created between writer and audience, in a few paragraphs that she appended to the last installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1 April 1852): “The author of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ must now take leave of a wide circle of friends whose faces she has never seen, but whose sympathies coming from afar have stimulated and cheered her in her work.”97 The serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era was sufficiently successful for Jewett to change his mind and go to the expense of publishing the first edition of the work in two volumes and different bindings. He even commissioned several illustrations. To a certain extent therefore, the favorable reactions of Era readers influenced both the final length of the novel and its material form as a book, a reminder that serialized publication acted as a testing ground as well as an advertisement for new fiction.98 Indeed, some of 93 William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America, 1790–1850 (Amherst, The University of Massachusetts Press, 1993; 1st edn 1959), p. 83. 94 Susan Geary, “Harriet Beecher Stowe, John P. Jewett, and Author-Publisher Relations in 1853,” in Joel Myerson (ed.), Studies in the American Renaissance, 1977 (Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1977), pp. 345–67. 95 E. Bruce Kirkham, The Building, pp. 148–9. 96 For an example of a French serial writer continuing to write against the wishes of both his editor and his publisher, see my “The Nineteenth-Century Serial as a Collective Enterprise: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Eugène Sue’s Les Mystères de Paris,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society (vol. 112, Part 1, 2002), pp. 127–52. 97 This and the following paragraphs were deleted in the book version. The family circle of readers evoked by Stowe find an echo in her own family, the first audience for each installment, as a letter in which Calvin describes the composition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin makes clear: most of the novel was written “at the table in the school-room, with the children round her, and read to them as each chapter was completed, amid their tears and sobs, and smiles and shouts” (see note 73 in this chapter). 98 On the serial in England, Bill Bell notes, “As an early form of market research, serial sales, too, often allowed the producer to keep his finger on the pulse of audience reaction to


29

the book’s success is certainly due to word-of-mouth publicity from Era readers. Bailey himself would remark to the author that the publication’s “large circulation had served as a tremendous advertisement for the work.”99 In 1855, Bailey offered the following picture of the effect of the serial publication on the sales figures of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a book: Our paper at that time had seventeen thousand subscribers, or, according to the usual calculation, no fewer than 85,000 readers. It is not wonderful that a work of such power, upon such a subject, eagerly looked for every week, for nearly a year, by eighty-five thousand readers; talked and written about incessantly; read on the car, in the steamboat, at the hotel, in parts, just enough to stimulate, without satisfying desire, should, the moment it appeared in book form, have run like fire on the prairie.100

Bailey continued to pay attention to the novel after it was published as a book, and did his best to promote its sales. For instance, he provided readers with the latest sales figures, and even sold the novel at the offices of the weekly.101 Moreover, Bailey defended Uncle Tom’s Cabin against its detractors, and he followed its reception in England.102 In other words, the link established while the novel was serialized continued indirectly long after the serial had ended. This is a clear example of a happy confluence of interests between the three protagonists of the serialization. Bailey’s interest in Stowe’s serial undoubtedly stemmed from his awareness of the common political agenda shared by author, reader, and newspaper. However, the editor was also quite sensitive to the increase in the number of subscribers owing to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Even before the last installment of Stowe’s novel, several notes in the Era clearly indicate that Bailey felt the need to reassure his readers about the kind of literary production they could expect in the future. On 25 March 1852, a week before the final installment of the novel was printed in the Era, Bailey announced that he had “on file several contributions of rare value, which will be published from time to time” after Uncle Tom’s Cabin had completed its run. The following week, Bailey continued in the same vein, assuring his readers that a novel translated from the German would soon follow, and praising the work as one of “rich and varied

the extent that, in some cases, not only the content but also the very length of the narrative became a market-led decision.” Bill Bell, “Fiction in the Marketplace: Towards a Study of the Victorian Serial,” in Myers and Harris (eds), Serials and Their Readers, pp. 125–44. 99 “A Pioneer Editor”: 749. 100 “A Mistake in Literary History—Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The National Era, 21 June 1855. According to Forrest Wilson, copies of the Era were passed “from family to family” until they were “quite worn out”: Wilson, Crusader, p. 272. For the multiple readership of periodicals in the United States, see Lund, America’s Continuing Story, pp. 53–4. 101 See for instance his notes in the Era of 1 and 22 April 1852. 102 For examples of the Era defending Stowe against her critics, see The National Era 7, 14, and 21 October 1852. On Stowe’s novel in England, see, among others, “American Writers in England,” The National Era, 26 May 1853.

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interest, and abounding in the noblest truths.”103 In the same issue of the paper, however, Bailey called on Stowe to keep up the fight against slavery by continuing to write for the Era. The various notes reveal a certain disquiet on the part of the editor, who was understandably concerned that his subscribers would feel the void left by the completion of Stowe’s serial. Other evidence suggests that he tried to secure Stowe as a permanent contributor. Indeed, a few days after the completion of the novel in the Era, Stowe wrote to Bailey that she was too exhausted to consider writing another novel in the near future, but that if she should—and the rest of her letter shows that she was already contemplating Dred—she would certainly offer it to the Era: “If I publish in any paper it shall be in yours.” More than likely, she was replying to a request from the editor.104 On 20 May 1852, a note from Bailey in The National Era read: “It is with great pleasure that we announce to our readers, that we have succeeded in engaging MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE [and her name was printed in capital letters so that the readers could not miss it], as a regular contributor to the columns of the Era.” The sales figures for the Era explain Bailey’s satisfaction and illustrate the impact a successful serialization could have on the circulation of a periodical. According to Stanley Harrold, Bailey’s bibliographer, a “precipitous rise” in circulation resulted from Stowe’s serialized novel, the number of subscribers increasing from 17,000 in 1851 to 19,000 in mid-1852, and briefly peaking at 28,000 in early 1853. When it became clear, however, that Stowe’s contributions would be few and far between, the circulation of the Era “dropped precipitously” in 1854, “as those who had subscribed for the sake of Uncle Tom’s Cabin withdrew.”105 In addition to the initial $100 that Stowe had received from Bailey before she began Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she was given another $200 during the course of the serialization; Bailey then asked her to name a sum after Uncle Tom’s Cabin had finished its run in the Era. She suggested $100, and therefore received a total of $400 for the entire novel.106 This was a little over three times the yearly cost of renting the house in Brunswick ($125). Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in the congenial environment of the Era, which partly accounts for the final form of the novel and its ensuing popularity when it was published as a book. For some contemporary reviewers, however, what they deemed a lack of plot was blamed on the fact that the story had been written for serialization. That is the tentative explanation in a review of the novel in Norton’s Literary Gazette: “Owing, perhaps, to its having been prepared for publication in weekly parts, there is no great plot to the story.”107 In Graham’s Magazine, George Graham, noting that “Mrs. Stowe’s style is as careless as her plot,” laid part of the blame on the Era, for 103 The

National Era, 1 April 1852. to Dr. Bailey, Brunswick, 18 April (1852); bMS Am 1569.7 (596), HO L. 105 Harrold, Gamaliel Bailey, pp. 143, 139, 185. 106 See Susan Geary, “Mrs. Stowe’s Income for the Serial Version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Papers of the Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, vol. 29 (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1976): 380–82. 107 Norton’s Literary Gazette 2/5 (15 May 1852): 86. 104 HBS


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necessitating that she write “perhaps in a hurry.”108 In contrast to these contemporary critics, Joan Hedrick, Stowe’s most recent biographer, sees serialization as exerting a positive influence on Stowe’s writing, by allowing her to adapt her unfolding novel to the reactions of her reader. According to Hedrick, Dred and Oldtown Folks, Stowe’s only two novels that were published in book form without first being serialized, are too long, “as if Stowe needed the check of an actual audience to shape her story.”109 Whether for good or ill, the case of Uncle Tom’s Cabin demonstrates the “reciprocal influences”110 at work between author, reader and editor in serialized fiction. The fourth protagonist, the book publisher, had already made his presence felt during the serialization, and was to occupy a privileged place in the next episode of the history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

108 George

Graham, “Black Letters; or, Uncle Tom-Foolery in Literature,” Graham’s Magazine (February 1853): 211. For the meaning and importance of plot in mid-nineteenthcentury American novels, see Nina Baym, Novels, Readers, and Reviewers: Responses to Fiction in Antebellum America (Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1987, 1st edn 1984), Chapter 4. 109 Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 332 and 344. 110 The term is William Charvat’s; see Steven Fink and Susan S. Williams (eds), Reciprocal Influences: Literary Production, Distribution, and Consumption in America (Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1999), p. 2.


Chapter 2

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Contract “This Master Rejection Slip of All Time” Stowe had taken out a copyright for Uncle Tom’s Cabin before it began to appear in The National Era; this clearly indicates that she intended to publish the work in book form. When looking for a publisher, the writer, or her sister Catharine, may have first tried Harper and Brothers. This New York firm, which had published Stowe’s first book, The Mayflower, in 1843, had already issued three of Catharine’s works, and had brought out a work by Charles Beecher, with an introduction by Stowe, in 1849. There is no evidence, however, that the proposal was ever actually made. The circumstances leading Boston publishers Phillips, Sampson to reject the novel are, on the other hand, well documented. Catharine Beecher’s work, The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women, was issued by Phillips, Sampson in 1851, and she suggested that the house bring out Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well. Of the three partners, Charles Sampson and Moses D. Phillips favored publication, while William Lee was against it. Although he opposed slavery, he felt certain that an anti-slavery novel serialized in an abolitionist journal would have no overall success as a book, holding

In an answer to readers’ letters inquiring whether Stowe’s work was later to be published in book form, Bailey replied, “Mrs Stowe, having taken out a copyright, of course intends to publish it [Uncle Tom’s Cabin] in a separate form” (The National Era, 4 September 1851). Charles Beecher, The Incarnation; or, Pictures of the Virgin and Her Son (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1849); for a list of Catharine’s works, see the National Union Catalog. According to Harpers biographer Eugene Exman, the publishing house would have turned down the offer for a variety of reasons. Although the Harpers never hesitated to serialize British novels in Harper’s Monthly before issuing them in book form, it seems they were reluctant to bring out American novels which had previously appeared as serials. Moreover, they enjoyed a sizable patronage in the Southern states, and doubtless would have hesitated before publishing a work which might alienate customers in that region. Eugene Exman, The Brothers Harper: A Unique Publishing Partnership and Its Impact Upon the Cultural Life of America from 1817 to 1853 (New York, Harper and Row, 1965), pp. 179, 337. The Harpers did, however, publish E.D.E.N. Southworth’s Retribution; or, The Vale of Shadows: A Tale of Passion (1849), previously serialized in the Era. In this work, the heroine’s daughter emancipates her slaves, yet a lengthy review of the work in The American Whig Review (“Retribution,” 10/22, October 1849: 376–90) makes it obvious that the anti-slavery aspect was then seen as a minor point in this “Tale of Passion.”

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that it “would not sell a thousand copies.” He also worried that the firm might lose its extensive Southern audience. In the following months, the monumental mistake of what Fred Lewis Pattee calls “this master rejection slip of all time” would become painfully evident to the partners. Yet when seen in the historical context, the rejection and its motivations seem rather unsurprising. That American publishers generally approached anti-slavery literature with extreme caution is evidenced by the number of fugitive slave narratives whose publication, even after the success of Frederick Douglass’s 1845 Narrative, had to be financed by the author or by anti-slavery associations. White historian Richard Hildreth was unsuccessful in his quest to find a publisher for The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore. This work, generally considered the first American anti-slavery novel, was initially presented to the public as a fugitive slave narrative. Its graphic exposition of the cruelties of slavery, especially its frank depiction of the sexual abuse of female slaves by their master, was deemed so shocking that Hildreth had to pay for the printing himself. Even after the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, anti-slavery literature did not easily find publishers. Hinton R. Helper’s 1857 book-length essay, Impending Crisis of the South: How to Meet It, was rejected by both Southern and Northern publishers. In the end, Helper was forced to pay publication costs. Editors of periodicals were just as wary of offending Southern subscribers, and Grace Greenwood, a regular contributor to the Era, lost her position as editorial assistant on Godey’s Lady’s Book when in 1850 she wrote a series of anti-slavery essays for Bailey’s journal. It is not difficult, therefore, to understand why Phillips, Sampson, who would later publish Dred (1856), Stowe’s second anti-slavery novel, turned

J.C. Derby, Fifty Years, p. 520. Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties, p. 132. The success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin also demonstrated that Southern patronage was not quite as indispensable as was previously thought. In the “Annotated Bibliography of Afro-American Autobiography,” established by William L. Andrews, about a fourth of the narratives bear “The Author” instead of a publisher’s name. William L. Andrews, To Tell a Free Story: The First Century of Afro-American Autobiography, 1760–1865 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986), pp. 335–42. A few slave narratives were issued by the American Anti-Slavery Society, as was Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, in 1845. The Slave: or Memoirs of Archy Moore was first printed in 1836 by John H. Eastburn who, as a result, lost his contract as official printer for the City of Boston: see Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, pp. 148–9; see also Evan Brandstadter, “Uncle Tom and Archy Moore: The Antislavery Novel as Ideological Symbol,” American Quarterly, 26/2 (May 1974): 160–75. James D. Hart, The Popular Book: A History of America’s Literary Taste (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1950), p.113. Ellen Moers, Harriet Beecher Stowe and American Literature (Hartford, The StoweDay Foundation, 1978), note 37, p. 31. In Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall (1855), a magazine writer looking at a pile of books for review ironically comments on his magazine’s caution; he has been told by his editor to announce Uncle Sam’s Log House “without comment, for fear of offending southern subscribers” (Ruth Hall, Penguin Classics, 1997, p. 206). Fred

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Contract

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down Catharine Beecher’s offer of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. If, as Jewett argues in a 1883 interview in The Manhattan (New York), other Boston publishers were approached by the Stowes, the same desire to avoid offending their Southern audience may have accounted for similar responses.10 John P. Jewett and Co. John P. Jewett (1814–1884) evidently had no such fears.11 Jewett, a New Englander, had worked as a bookseller and publisher in Salem, Massachusetts, between 1836 and 1844. He then moved to Cincinnati, but only stayed a few months there. He was back in Salem in 1845, and the following year he opened a bookselling and publishing firm in Boston.12 Though he specialized in textbooks, readers, and religious works, by the early 1850s, Jewett had also begun to publish some fiction and a handful of anti-slavery works. Thus, the 36-page “Descriptive Catalogue of Valuable Books Published by John P. Jewett” dated March 1848 includes two anti-slavery works by Richard Hildreth, the novel Archy Moore, and Despotism in America, an essay.13 In 1851, he issued Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s novel The Sunny Side; or, A Country Minister’s Wife. Before publishing Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Jewett was already known to Stowe’s family since he published Henry Ward Beecher’s Lectures to Young Men. In addition, Jewett had undertaken the publication of the works of Stowe’s father, Lyman Beecher, in six volumes; the first was announced in an advertisement placed in The National Era (30 October 1851). In 1852, when he brought out Uncle Tom’s Cabin in book form, Jewett was a small publisher compared to other Boston firms such as Little, Brown; Phillips, Sampson; or Ticknor, Reed and Fields.14 The list of Jewett’s publications, as established by Michael Winship, indicates that the house issued six titles in 1848, seven in 1849, 17 in 1850 and 18 in 1851. By comparison, Ticknor, Reed and Fields brought out 77 titles 10 William Henry Forman, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Manhattan: An Illustrated Literary Magazine for the People, 1/1 (January 1883): 28–31. 11 In a letter to her husband, Isabella Beecher Hooker (Stowe’s half-sister) quotes Stowe as saying, “he [Jewett] has lost southern trade before, for publishing A-Sy [Anti-Slavery] works and being an abolitionist …” (Isabella Beecher Hooker to John Hooker, 26 June 1852, Isabella Beecher Hooker Collection, HBSC). 12 Michael Winship describes Jewett’s career and provides a list of his imprints and publications in his “John Punchard Jewett, Publisher of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Biographical Note with a Preliminary Checklist of His Imprints,” Roger Eliot Stoddard at Sixty-Five: A Celebration (NewYork, Thornwillow Press, 2000), pp. 85–114. 13 “Descriptive Catalogue of valuable Books Published by John P. Jewett and Co., n°23 Cornhill, Boston.” A copy of the catalog, dated March 1848, is housed at the Huntington Library. Despotism in America; or, an Enquiry into the Nature and Results of the Slave-Holding System in the United States was first issued in Boston in 1840 under the imprint of Whipple and Damrell (National Union Catalog). 14 See the description of mid-1850s Boston publishers in Raymond L. Kilgour, Lee and Shepard: Publishers for the People (Hamden, CT, The Shoe String Press, 1965), pp. 6–9.

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in 1850 and 105 in 1851, most of them classified as belles lettres.15 The increase in the number of titles produced by Jewett may well have been owing to the additional capital ($10,000) brought in in 1850 by a new partner, John C. Proctor, also known as “Deacon” Proctor. Between 1852 and 1856, Jewett’s “most prosperous years,” the publisher brought out over 40 new works a year on average.16 Jewett also extended his business to the west: in the fall of 1851, Jewett’s half brother, Henry P.B. Jewett, along with the son of John C. Proctor and a third partner, J.H. Worthington, opened a book selling and publishing firm in Cleveland.17 The new house, in fact a branch of the Boston company, was advertised in The National Era.18 Jewett left two conflicting accounts of his first contacts with Stowe. Both were issued long after the facts. The magazine The Manhattan published an interview of Jewett in 1883. Another account drafted by Jewett was printed in the East Orange (New Jersey) Record in 1947.19 In The Manhattan, Jewett describes himself as the last resort—in essence, as the savior—of the Stowes, who came to him after they had unsuccessfully offered the book to several Boston publishers. They had been turned down because the publishers “were afraid to have anything to do with such a dangerous anti-slavery production.” Jewett went on to explain that, as “one of the founders of the Anti-Slavery Society,” he viewed the anti-slavery message of the novel as a strong point in its favor. According to Jewett, his wife, who was then reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era, urged him to publish it, arguing that 15 Ticknor, Reed and Fields replaced William D. Ticknor and Co. in 1849, and Ticknor and Fields was used from 1854 onward: for a study of the firm and its publications, see Michael Winship, American Literary Publishing in the Mid-Nineteenth Century: The Business of Ticknor and Fields (Cambridge University Press, 1995). The figures are taken from James T. Barnes, Authors, Publishers and Politicians: The Quest for an Anglo-American Copyright Agreement 1815–1854 (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1974), pp. 4–5. The largest publisher in the United States at that time, Harper and Brothers, brought out 366 titles between 1846 and 1849 (Exman, The Brothers Harper, p. 234). 16 Michael Winship, “John Punchard Jewett,” p. 86. The figure of $10,000 is quoted in Massachusetts-Suffolk-Boston, vol. 68, p. 317, entry dated 22 June 1850, R.G. Dun and Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. This is one in a series of ledgers of the first commercial credit reporting agency in America, founded as The Mercantile Agency in 1841, and later known as R.G. Dun and Co. In the early 1850s, the firm employed over 2,000 correspondents in the United States and Canada. These correspondents wrote regular reports on the credit rating of businessmen in their respective cities; they needed to be as accurate as possible so that subscribers in search of credit information could rely upon them (James H. Madison, “The Credit Reports of R.G. Dun and Co. as Historical Sources,” Historical Methods Newsletter, 8/4, September 1975). 17 Michael Winship, “John Punchard Jewett,” p. 85; Massachusetts-Suffolk-Boston, vol. 68, p. 317, entries dated 22 June 1850 and 21 October 1851, R.G. Dun and Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. 18 The National Era, 30 October 1851. The three partners advertised themselves as “the Western Publishers of all the works issued by J.P. Jewett & Co., of Boston” and included Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the list of publications for which they were soliciting orders. 19 See E. Bruce Kirkham, The Building, pp. 140–49.


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the work would “sell largely” as a book. Jewett concurred, and decided to issue the work, thinking that “the story would not only repay the cost of publication in book form, but would yield some profit.” The publisher was also convinced that the book would serve as “a strong anti-slavery document.” In a way, just as Stowe had begun to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin from a mixture of ideological and financial concerns, Jewett’s acceptance of the manuscript was motivated both by the publisher’s politics and his business acumen. In the account published in 1947, Jewett explained that he himself wrote to the Stowes after being repeatedly urged to do so by his wife. In her introduction to the 1879 edition, Stowe also notes that Jewett contacted her. This is also the version of events related in Charles E. Stowe’s biography of Stowe, in Annie Fields’ book on the writer, and in Charles Dudley Warner’s “The Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”20 The last word is perhaps best left to nearly-contemporaneous accounts of the initial agreement. According to a May 1852 article in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, Jewett subscribed to the Era, and after having read the first installment of the novel, his wife suggested that he write the author. Jewett at first resisted her entreaties, but eventually gave in and wrote to Stowe.21 A similar account is found in an 1854 article printed in Norton, in which the author unambiguously states that Jewett initiated the contact after “much importunity from his wife.”22 The date of first contact between Stowe and Jewett can, however, be accurately inferred from The National Era. On 18 September 1851, Bailey announced in the weekly that “We learn through a private source that Mrs. H.B. Stowe has just completed an engagement with Mssrs. Jewett & Co., of Boston, for the publication of her story, now appearing in our columns. The stereotyping commences this week ….”23 Jewett thus made his decision very early and on the basis of the roughly one-third of the novel that had appeared in the Era. It is indeed quite unlikely that he saw more of the manuscript since Stowe could barely keep pace with the printing. Like Bailey before him, Jewett engaged to publish a work about whose final length and contents he could have no precise knowledge. Negotiating the Contract Strangely enough, after the initial agreement, six months elapsed before the final and formal contract was signed, on 13 March 1852, a week before the book appeared on 20 20 See Kirkham, The Building, (pp. 142–3) for the 1947 account; HBS, “Introduction,” p. lx; Charles E. Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 158; Annie Fields, Life and Letters, p. 137; Charles Dudley Warner, “The Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Atlantic Monthly, 78/467 (September 1896): 314. 21 Account of a meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 27 May 1852, UVa web. 22 “Correspondence,” Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular, 1/11 (1 June 1854): 275. 23 The National Era, 18 September 1851.

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March.24 This extremely late signature accounts, according to Kirkham, for Jewett’s concern over the length of the novel. Indeed, if we are to believe Bailey’s note in the Era dated 18 September 1851, Jewett had been stereotyping the novel since the fall of 1851.25 He had already invested money in the work, and could not abandon the publication without incurring a loss; on the other hand, Stowe herself was not formally bound to Jewett and until the end could have opted out and offered the work to another house.26 Whatever the reason for the long delay between the initial agreement and the final signature, that Jewett and the writer waited until the last minute to enter into a written contract indicates a great degree of trust and informality, which is reminiscent of the relationships between Stowe and Bailey.27 The negotiations that preceded the signature are detailed in Jewett’s interview in The Manhattan as well as in a document drafted by Calvin Stowe and dated 21 June 1852.28 According to Jewett, Catharine Beecher took part in the talks, and both Stowe and her husband participated in the debate. But Calvin Stowe’s account makes it perfectly clear that he was the only one involved in the discussions with Jewett. Charles Edward Stowe quotes Harriet as saying that she “did not know until a week afterward precisely what terms Mr. Stowe had made” and, moreover, “did not care.”29 This remark is in keeping with Stowe’s public persona as well as with the image projected in the biography of the writer by her son, but we know that Stowe usually kept an eye on what publishers owed her.30 It is entirely possible, however, that Stowe truly kept away from the negotiations. E. Bruce Kirkham has demonstrated that Stowe extensively revised both the manuscript that she sent to The National Era and the pages that she mailed to Jewett.31 It is quite likely that, as the publication date drew closer, Stowe was busy revising and reading proofs and that, as a result, she gave her husband the responsibility to negotiate the terms of the contract with Jewett. In 1852, she would in any case have been unable to sign the contract herself. Until 1855, married women in Massachusetts could not legally sign contracts or keep 24 I have been unable to find the contract. Jewett’s archives have apparently disappeared. C.E. Stowe provides the date of the signature (Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 159). 25 Bailey confirmed the information in January when he told his readers that the publisher was stereotyping the work “as fast as it appears in the Era” (The National Era, 29 January 1852). 26 Kirkham, The Building, pp. 148–9. 27 Both Bailey and Jewett had accepted the manuscript on the basis of its first chapters. 28 “Statement of Facts, by C.E. Stowe, in Regard to the Publication of Mrs Stowe’s Work Entitled ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’” Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. The story of the negotiations is detailed in Michael Winship’s “‘The Greatest Book of Its Kind’: A Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 109, part 2 (October 1999): 309–32. 29 Charles E. Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 159. 30 Stowe’s son notes that until then Stowe’s books had brought in too little for the writer to consider literature as a money-making business, a point contradicted (at least as regards periodical writing) by Stowe’s correspondence (Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 158–9). 31 Kirkham, The Building, Chapters 6 and 7.


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their earnings.32 As Melissa Homestead puts it, Calvin Stowe was “the single legal subject” created by the union of Harriet and Calvin in marriage.”33 The situation was similar in most other states and when, in 1856, Fanny Fern married James Parton, they signed a pre-nuptial agreement that allowed her to enjoy her property “as fully and absolutely as if she were a feme sole.”34 Jewett’s and Calvin’s accounts of the negotiations differ on a number of points. Taken together, however, they provide valuable insights into three different types of contract in the mid-nineteenth century:35 1) the outright sale of a manuscript; 2) the half-profit system; and 3) the royalty (or copyright) contract. In the first case, the publisher bore the entire cost of the publication, but received the largest return if the work sold well. As for the writer, it ensured him/her of some financial compensation, whatever the success of the book. The system seems to have been employed mainly by writers who were pressed for money.36 Fanny Fern’s Fern Leaves from Fanny’s Portfolio (1853) provides an enlightening illustration of the differences in 32 See “An Act to Protect the Property of Married Women,” in Acts and Resolves Passed

by The General Court of Massachusetts, in the Year 1855 (Boston, William White, Printer to the State, 1855), pp. 710–11. In “Conjugal Bonds and Wage Labor: Rights of Contract in the Age of Emancipation” (Journal of American History, 75/2, [September 1988]: 471–500), Amy Dru Stanley explains that the 1855 Massachusetts act gave married women only limited rights to their earnings. For a detailed study of the implications of married women property laws for female writers in the nineteenth century, see Melissa Homestead, American Women Authors, especially Chapter 1. 33 Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors, p. 148. 34 Quoted in Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage, p. 158. 35 Alice Schreyer notes that, “The variety and complexity of author–publisher contracts in nineteenth-century America reflected the as yet tentative nature of the relationship between them.” Alice D. Schreyer, “Copyright and Books in Nineteenth-Century America,” in Michael Hackenberg (ed.), Getting the Books Out: Papers of the Chicago Conference on the Book in Nineteenth-Century America (Washington, The Center for the Book, Library of Congress, 1987), pp. 121–36. 36 Susan Warner (who wrote under the pen-name Elizabeth Wetherell), the author of such popular works as The Wide, Wide World (1851) and Queechy (1852), published by Putnam, made relatively little money on her books because, except for The Wide, Wide World, she sold them outright as she was pressed for money (Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage, pp. 18–19). In 1837, William Gilmore Simms who until then had signed half-profits contracts with the Harpers, asked them to buy the copyright of five of his works, including one yet to be written, because he was in financial trouble. Since he was a popular writer, this meant that he would lose money in the long run while the Harpers stood to gain more than they would have under the initial contract (Exman, The Brothers Harper, pp. 92–3). Richard Henry Dana, whose Two Years Before the Mast (1840) had been bought by the Harpers for $250, tried in vain to regenotiate his contract on the grounds that the book had proved extremely popular (Exman, The Brothers Harper, pp. 129, 138). Ticknor and Fields did not favor buying the rights to American works for a fixed sum, and in the 1850s only did so for two works, one of which was Hawthorne’s Life of Franklin Pierce, for which the firm gave the writer $300 (Winship, American Literary Publishing, p. 134).

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compensation for a work purchased outright and one contracted on a royalty basis. When J.C. Derby of the Auburn (New York) firm Derby and Miller, offered to publish a collection of her newspaper articles, he gave Fern a choice of a flat sum of $1,000 or a royalty of 10 cents on every copy sold. The book sold 70,000 copies in less than a year, earning its author almost 10 times the amount she would have garnered by selling it outright.37 According to Jewett, Calvin was ready to sell his wife’s work for something in the neighborhood of $25 to $50, as his only ambition for the novel was that his wife would have enough to buy a silk dress. Jewett advised him against it: “I told him I was not a competent adviser on that point, as my interest and his were antagonistic, but that if the story were mine I would not sell it.”38 Rejecting Calvin’s offer—an offer which Calvin does not mention in his own account—makes the publisher appear generous, since he goes against his own interest, while also highlighting Calvin’s naïveté. Viewed in retrospect, ceding the rights to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, especially for such a trifling figure, would indeed have been a monumental mistake.39 If we are to believe the publisher, Catharine Beecher then intervened to suggest the Stowes choose the system of the half profits, which she had previously experienced, and in which author and publisher shared costs and profits. In her history of Houghton Mifflin, Ellen Ballou notes that this type of contract was used in Britain more commonly than in the United States.40 Some American publishing houses employed it frequently, however. Thus, if Ticknor and Fields published very few works on the half-profits system, many Harper authors were under such contracts, and Stowe was in future to select half profits for a number of her works.41 Half profits allowed a 37

Joyce W. Warren, “Introduction” to Fanny Fern, Ruth Hall and Other Writings (New Brunswick, NJ, Rutgers University Press, 1999, 1st edn 1986), p. xvi. 38 The Manhattan: 29. 39 As a matter of fact, the figures provided by Jewett are so ridiculously low that the publisher may well have made up the story of Calvin’s offer. In addition to a number of inconsistencies noted by Kirkham in his Building, Jewett argues in The Manhattan that he was the first publisher of Josiah Henson’s slave narrative, which he published in 1858. In fact, a first version of Henson’s narrative had been issued by Boston publisher A.D. Phelps in 1849; Jewett brought out a revised and expanded edition in 1858. Furthermore, in his interview, Jewett describes himself as a man of great courage, daring to publish a work (Uncle Tom’s Cabin) turned down by all the other publishers contacted. As we shall see, Stowe’s first novel had become a classic by 1883, and its incredible sales figures were still quoted as a phenomenon. The self-aggrandizing description of Jewett in The Manhattan makes the publisher an integral part of the mythology surrounding the novel. 40 Ellen B. Ballou, The Building of the House: Houghton Mifflin’s Formative Years (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1970), p. 142. 41 For Ticknor and Fields, see Winship, American Literary Publishing, p. 44; Exman’s The Brothers Harper includes a number of such examples for writers of fiction and nonfiction, including Catherine M. Sedgwick, William Gilmore Simms, Theodore Sedgwick Fay, and Melville (the latter’s contracts were sometimes based on half-profits, sometimes based on a royalty percentage). In the early 1850s, however, the Harpers began to move from half-profits to royalties contracts (Exman, The Brothers Harper, p. 331).


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publisher to reduce the financial risk on a publication, while it meant more money for the writer if the work sold well.42 Jewett was reluctant to sign this type of agreement, “having perceived that under it, whether a book is a profit or a loss, the author has no means of knowing whether the account of expenses is correct, and is therefore apt to suspect that he has been cheated by his publishers.”43 After Calvin had shown the contract to his friend Philip Greeley, who himself consulted two Boston publishers, he told Jewett that he “would make a new contract of 20 per cent on the sales, instead of the contract of half profits.”44 Jewett refused, and Calvin bargained for 15 per cent. The publisher insisted that 10 per cent was all he could pay, and that with 15 per cent, he could “afford only to make it a common book-store publication, without the employment of agencies, or any extra expense of advertising.” Jewett backed the 10 per cent proposition with the promise that he would “spare no pains nor expense nor effort to push the book into unparalleled circulation,” which would in the end turn out to be more profitable for the Stowes. At length, Calvin accepted and signed the contract.45 Ten per cent was an average royalty in 1852, even if well-known writers were often able to command more. Although the most common royalty for Ticknor and Fields authors was 10 per cent in the mid-1850s, the percentages could vary from as little as 8 and 9 per cent to as much as 15 per cent.46 A 10 per cent royalty also seems to have been commonly offered by the Harpers, although the New York firm, like its Boston counterpart, increased the percentage according to the reputation—and bargaining skills—of the author.47 Susan Geary argues that the rejection of the contract of half profits is essentially owing to Jewett’s artful manoeuvers: by March 1852, the publisher had realized that the book would probably sell well, and therefore talked Calvin into accepting a royalty rather than half profits, by which the publisher stood to gain less.48 Calvin’s own account throws light on this vexed question. Calvin was hardly an acute businessman,

42 Charvat accounts for the half-profits system—along with a number of other methods that required the author to bear all or part of the financial burden of publication—by the lack of capital of American publishers until roughly 1848–1850. See William Charvat, Literary Publishing in America, Chapter 2. 43 The Manhattan: 29. On publishers’ potential “padding” of publication costs, see Charvat, Literary Publishing, pp. 43–4. 44 “Statement of Facts ….” 45 Winship, “‘The Greatest Book of Its Kind’”: 318–19. 46 Winship, American Literary Publishing, p. 134. 47 Exman speaks of “the customary ten percent royalty after 1,000 copies” offered by the Harpers in the early 1850s, which means that the Harpers would exempt the first 1,000 copies of royalties, in effect making the author share the burden of the publication (Exman, The Brothers Harper, p. 332). As Jewett’s archives have apparently disappeared, we cannot ascertain whether Jewett exempted a number of copies from royalties, although in The Manhattan the publisher implies he did not, as he claims that he offered to pay 10 per cent “on the retail price of every copy sold by me, the book to appear in two volumes at $1.50 for the two.” 48 See note 94 chapter 1.

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and his wife once described him as “timid and modest and unfit to make a bargain.”49 Clearly, Calvin allowed Jewett to talk him into accepting 10 per cent, but there is no doubt either that Calvin could have taken half profits had he not 1) received advice to the contrary, and 2) been frightened by the potential financial risk involved in half profits. The half-profits option remained open until the end of negotiations.50 Calvin’s account exonerates Jewett of all blame other than wanting to maximize his profits: “There was no collusion what ever, and no improper means of any kind used, in making the bargain; but every thing, so far as I know, was conducted in a manner perfectly open & fair, and if I made a poor bargain for myself, it was wholly my own fault. I did the best I knew how for myself, and Mr Jewett did the best he knew how for himself ….”51 The Quarrel Why, two months after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, did Calvin feel the need to pen such an official-looking document with the ponderous title “Statement of Facts, by C.E. Stowe, in Regard to the Publication of Mrs Stowe’s Work Entitled ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’”? Catharine had expressed her dissatisfaction with the contract and felt convinced that Calvin had been imposed upon by Jewett; as Isabella Beecher Hooker, Stowe’s half-sister, wrote to her husband at the end of June 1852, “Cate is making herself half sick about it—calls Jewett a scoundrel & with her usual pertinacy says she will make the matter public unless they adopt her view of the case.” The day before, Isabella had assured her spouse that “Jewett & Co. are ready to pay her [Stowe] 10 000, next week in cash—& she is perfectly satisfied with the small percentage & with his large share of the profits.”52 However, the phrase “perfectly satisfied” hardly jibes with the description of Stowe’s percentage as “small” and Jewett’s profits as “large.” Moreover, Calvin’s account makes it clear that he felt he had failed in the negotiation. In other words, by the end of June, the whole family was of the opinion that Calvin had made a poor bargain. In mid-June, Jewett announced that 50,000 copies, or 100,000 volumes of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been sold, and the work was being hotly debated in the American press. Between the signature of the contract and the expression of Catharine’s anger, Stowe’s position had been fundamentally altered by the phenomenon of the sales figures, and the fame and controversy surrounding Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

49 HBS

to James Parton, 6 February 1868, Fanny Fern and Ethel Parton Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA. 50 In The Manhattan, Jewett ascribes the rejection of the half profits to Calvin’s friends, who advised him against it. Yet it is likely that the Stowes’ always precarious finances led Calvin to select the royalty agreement. See Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 223. 51 “Statement of Facts …” 52 Isabella Beecher Hooker to John Hooker, 26 and 25 June 1852, Isabella Beecher Hooker Collection, HBSC.


43

Isabella’s letter of 26 June thus makes it clear that Calvin wrote his “Statement of Facts” in order to defuse Catharine’s anger and prevent a scandal.53 Isabella claimed that Stowe was fully aware that the publisher’s efforts to promote Uncle Tom’s Cabin “have secured so large a sale,” 54 yet it is obvious that the writer herself soon came to conclude that the publisher had taken advantage of Calvin’s inexperience. By December 1852, Stowe had already considered changing publishers for her next work. She had, however, finally decided against such a move.55 Jewett had already announced the publication of Stowe’s A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story Is Founded. Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work. This was a collection of documents Stowe compiled to answer attacks that she had exaggerated the horrors of slavery in the novel. Changing publishers at that time would have caused a conflict which would inevitably have become public.56 Mid-nineteenth-century women writers were expected to minimize the financial aspect of their careers and emphasize the moral purpose of their works. They wrote to exert a positive influence on society, not to make money. In the fall and winter of 1852–1853, Stowe was being criticized for handling the subject of slavery, a topic regarded as unfit for a woman. While this particular attack could easily be met with the argument that Stowe was acting for the greater good of the nation, the public would certainly not have seen a quarrel over financial compensation as part of the same crusade. Yet this was a sore point, all the more so because Stowe had made exactly the same deal for Key that Calvin had done for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.57 In an undated draft of a letter to Jewett, Stowe asked the publisher, “Were you correct in persuading me & Mr Stowe that a ten per cent contract on books that sell as mine have is better for us than a twenty percent one?” Between the time the contracts were drafted and signed and Stowe’s letters to Jewett and Edward, the power play had altered considerably and the allusion to books that “sell as mine have” is key in that respect. A now-successful writer was blaming her publisher for having deceived her. Stowe gave Jewett an ultimatum: either accept private arbitration or she would consider herself “entirely at liberty” to choose another publisher for her next works. The publisher turned down the suggestion angrily and preferred “to break entirely.”58 53

It also fully confirms that the negotiation was carried out solely by Calvin (“Mr Stowe did the business in his own way & is perfectly satisfied now,” Isabella notes). 54 Letter dated 26 June 1852. 55 Winship, “‘The Greatest Book of Its Kind’”: 321. 56 “I could not take another publisher for a book he has announced without (bringing?) enquiry on us both, which would be irritating to him, & provoke him to say things, which it might become necessary for us to answer and thus a strife be produced” (HBS to Edward, undated letter, Folder 261, Beecher-Stowe Family Papers, SL). 57 “Did you do right to persuade Mr Stowe that it was best for him to take ten per cent on Uncle Tom when he wished to take twenty & you had offered half profits—and to persuade me afterwards to make the same for the key [sic] …?” HBS to Jewett, Folder 261, Beecher-Stowe Family Papers, SL. 58 HBS to Edward, see note 55.

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Even though Stowe acknowledged the time and energy Jewett had put into the promotion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, deemed Catharine wrong and unjust toward Jewett, and admitted that she herself might not always have chosen the right words in addressing the publisher, she had clearly lost all confidence in him. She found him “overbearing—uneasy if crossed & unwilling to have fair enquiries made.” He was, therefore, “not the man I wish to be in business relations with.” 59 In other words, Jewett’s efforts to promote Uncle Tom’s Cabin could not compensate for the feeling that she had been robbed from the outset. Discussions with British publishers during her trip to England in 1853 had confirmed that she could have obtained a better deal from Jewett. Future negotiations that Stowe carried out with publishers would show that she heeded that initial lesson. By then, of course, she would enjoy a solid reputation and possess a bargaining power that naturally eluded her at the beginning of her career. This episode in nineteenth-century author–publisher relationships tends to support Jewett’s contention in The Manhattan that a writer’s and a publisher’s interests are “antagonistic.” Was Jewett the “unsung hero of the novel’s book-publication,” in the words of Stowe’s biographer Forrest Wilson, or the “scoundrel” described by Catharine?60 He was probably a little of both, or neither. That he should have tried to make the best possible terms for himself is hardly surprising and also accords with Susan Geary’s view of the difficulties of publishing fiction in mid-nineteenth-century America. Since there was no way of ascertaining that a particular novel would sell— and there still isn’t, at the beginning of the twenty-first century—the best a publisher could do was “to make an informed guess and draw up an agreement in accordance with his guess.” Sales figures, whether bad or good, might then considerably change the balance of power between author and publisher.61 Comparing Stowe with one of her contemporaries, also published by Jewett, proves enlightening. In October 1857, Maria McIntosh wrote to Maria Cummins—another of Jewett’s authors—that she was expecting money from the publisher but doubted whether he could pay her because of the financial crisis he (along with the rest of the country) was undergoing. McIntosh felt “nothing but sympathy” for Jewett. In keeping with the so-called cult of true womanhood, McIntosh felt grateful to her publisher for his help. As Kelley explains, “That at least was the clearly expressed attitude of a number of literary domestics toward their publishers, regardless of the fact that they had earned what they had received.”62 In this respect, Stowe’s position 59 HBS

to Edward, see note 55. Wilson, Crusader, p. 277; Isabella Beecher Hooker to John Hooker, 26 June 1852, Isabella Beecher Hooker Collection, HBSC. 61 Susan Geary, “Harriet Beecher Stowe, John P. Jewett”: 357–9. 62 Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage, pp. 146–7. According to Kelley (p. 24), Jewett offered Cummins, a then unknown writer, a 10 per cent contract for her first novel, The Lamplighter, which sold 73,000 copies in 1854, the year of its initial publication. He then gave her the same terms for her second novel in 1857, and she published her third novel in 1860 with Ticknor and Fields, whose contract gave her a 15 per cent royalty. 60 Forrest


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seems closer to that of Mary Abigail Dodge, who entered into an open conflict with James T. Fields over her royalties, yet she was also more cautious than Dodge, who wrote and published an account of the quarrel. Stowe kept her indignation private, or at least within the family circle.63 Such circumspection, however, became all the more difficult inasmuch as Catharine’s indignation grew apace with the sales of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and later Key. Her desire to expose Jewett caused much unrest in the Stowe and Beecher families. “What do you think she is going to do?” Mary Beecher Perkins wrote to her father Lyman Beecher in 1853. Mary strongly suspected Catharine of planning to write a book to denounce Jewett, just as she had publicly accused in Truth Stranger than Fiction a clergyman who had broken pledge with Delia Bacon. Mary added, “It will be horrible to have this matter bro’t [sic] out with her version & fly all over the country.” She herself had pleaded with Catharine to remain silent, but to no avail, and Mary was now calling upon her father for advice.64 Although Catharine never publicly exposed Jewett, she did not give up that easily. As late as 1855, she wrote to the Reverend E.N. Kirk, whose congegration counted both Jewett and his partner, Proctor, as members. She explained that a letter she had sent to Jewett to suggest a private meeting had remained unanswered, and that she was therefore bringing the matter to his attention. She must have been fully aware of her family’s reservations regarding the propriety of such a move since she pointed out to Kirk that her family and friends did not know all the particulars of the affair, were unqualified to judge, and should not be involved. Catharine viewed it as her “duty” to bring Jewett to account, but evidently failed to do so.65 Jewett was perfectly aware of Catharine’s feelings towards him, and noted in the Manhattan interview that she “went to her grave persuaded that I had robbed her sister of many thousands of dollars.” As for Stowe herself, she very rarely mentioned Jewett in her correspondence, but when she did so, it was with decidedly mixed feelings. Replying to Edward Everett Hale, who had asked her for money in order to help a protégé of his, Stowe advised him to write Jewett: “J.P. Jewett ought to give for he made from Uncle Tom threefold what I did—a lions share—I wd [sic] ask him to subscribe were I you—I think he will—he is often quite liberal.”66 In 1884, writing to J.C. Derby who was at work on

63 For an account of Dodge’s quarrel with Fields, see Ballou, The Building of the House,

pp. 143–56. For a comparison of Stowe, Southworth and Dodge in their respective relationships with their publishers, see Coultrap-McQuin, Doing Literary Business. 64 Mary Beecher Perkins to Lyman Beecher, 22 January 1853, White Collection, HBSC. The letter hints that Lyman Beecher was to meet with Jewett’s partner, John (“Deacon”) Proctor and discuss the matter with him. Hedrick relates the story of Delia Bacon and Catharine’s involvement in Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 224. 65 Catharine Beecher to Rev. E.N. Kirk, 4 July 1855, Katharine S. Day Collection, HBSC. 66 HBS to Edward Everett Hale, undated letter, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318 etc., Clifton Waller Barret Library of American Literature, Special Collections, University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, hereafter UVa.

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his Fifty Years Among Authors Books and Publishers, Stowe noted, “What Jewett says about Uncle Tom is false—I was not altogether such a fool as he represents—Altho [sic] I confess I was surprised at the extent of the success.”67

67 HBS to J.C. Derby, 11 March 1884, HM 24163, HL. “What Jewett says” may refer to

information that Jewett privately communicated to Derby, but might also allude to Jewett’s interview in The Manhattan, especially to the part in which Jewett claims that he could have bought the rights to Uncle Tom’s Cabin for a few dollars.

Chapter 3

“The Story of the Age”: Advertising and Promotion Pre-Launch Campaign The initial stage of Jewett’s advertising campaign took place, logically enough, during the last few weeks preceding the publication of the novel. In an interview with The Manhattan, Jewett emphasized the pioneering aspect of his pre-launch strategy: instead of advertising a list of books, as publishers generally did then, Jewett focused all his energy and money on a single novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: I sent advertisements to the greater number of Northern newspapers, with notices of the book written by myself. These notices usually appeared as editorial matter, although just as I had written them. Before a single copy of the book had been bound I had expended thousands of dollars for advertising—an enormous sum in those days to be spent in advertising a single book.

Advertisements in The National Era, as well as in a trade journal such as Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular, reveal the specificity of Jewett’s tactics. In the Era, the first advertisement in which Jewett announced the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared on 30 October 1851. It was, however, mainly devoted to the opening of the Cleveland branch of Jewett, Proctor and Worthington, and contained little information on Stowe’s novel other than the fact that it was “a thrilling tale.” This is not surprising given that, at that time, only nineteen chapters had been printed; as ill-luck would have it, the 30 October number of the Era was one of three that carried no installment of Stowe’s novel. Jewett’s next advertisement, on 4 March 1852, was entirely taken up by praise of, and information on, Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Will be ready March 20. Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe’s Great American Tale, entitled Uncle Tom’s Cabin: or, Life among the Lowly. This great work, which has long been expected, is now so nearly completed that we can promise its appearance on the 20th of March. By all who have read it it is pronounced to be

“Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Manhattan, January 1883: 30.

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The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002 THE STORY OF THE AGE. For power of description and thrilling delineation of character it is unrivalled, and will add fresh laurels to the reputation of the talented Authoress. It will be published in two volumes 12 mo. 312 pages in each volume, with six elegant designs by Billings engraved by Baker—in three styles of binding: Paper Covers for $1; Cloth, $1.50; Cloth, full gilt, $2—with discount to the Trade. Early orders solicited. JOHN P. JEWETT & CO., Publishers, Boston, and JEWETT, PROCTOR, & WORTHINGTON, Cleveland, Ohio. For sale by the principal Booksellers in the United States.

The story was no longer just “thrilling”; it had become “great,” “unrivalled,” and even “THE STORY OF THE AGE,” a point made in capital letters to ensure that readers would not miss it. The text of this first advertisement by Jewett did not mention the anti-slavery content of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, whereas later advertisements would. In this early stage of his campaign, Jewett chose to tout the novel as an object of consensus. In future, the very controversy that Stowe’s book raised would naturally contribute to spreading its fame. The advertisement, which also appeared in Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular as well as other papers, was repeated in succeeding numbers of the Era. This iteration, together with the claim that the novel had “long been expected,” and that its publication on 20 March was a promise, not a certainty, built a degree of suspense. Jewett handled the publication of the work as an event in its own right, and kept readers on tenterhooks. Contemporary audiences are naturally much more familiar with this type of marketing strategy thanks, for instance, to the global marketing blitz preceding the launch of each new volume of Harry Potter. The basic principle, however, was already deemed effective in the midnineteenth century, as Jewett’s campaign demonstrates. The suspense ended on 25 March, at least in the Era, when a new advertisement by Jewett announced that the work had been brought out that very week. The advertisement describes the volumes and the various ways copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin could be obtained:

The National Era, 4 March 1852: 3. This advertisement, however, remains relatively modest in terms of its size and conservative in respect to typography, especially when compared to later advertisements for the novel by Jewett. In fact, the advertisement in the Era is not very different from the two advertisements that appeared below it, one for Æolian Piano Fortes and one on the virtues of “Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral.” It would be both superfluous and tedious to record instances of the use of hyperbole in book advertising. In 1845, a Cincinnati bookseller announcing that he had received a supply of Eugène Sue’s and G.P.R. James’s novels, proclaimed “JAMES AND SUE FOREVER,” and the editor of a Cincinnati periodical wrote in 1846 that Bulwer’s latest work was “the book of the season.” Walter Sutton, The Western Book Trade: Cincinnati as a Nineteenth-Century Publishing and Book-Trade Center (Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1961), pp. 192–3.

“The Story of the Age”: Advertising and Promotion

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Now Ready, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Illustrated with six elegant Designs by Billings, engraved by Baker. By Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. Price—In paper binding $1.00 In cloth binding $1.50 In cloth binding, gilt $2.00 The book can be sent by mail; the postage on the paper bound is 26 cents, and 34 cents on the cloth bound. Persons sending these amounts in postage stamps, in addition to the price above quoted, shall receive a copy prepaid. All orders from west of the Alleghany mountains should be directed to the Western publishers. […] March 25 Agents wanted to sell this book.

Perhaps because it was much more sedate—albeit practical and useful—than the preceding advertisement, Jewett also ran the first advertisement in the same number of the Era, even though its first line (“Will be Ready March 20”) made it rather obsolete. On 25 March, readers of the anti-slavery paper could thus read the penultimate installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the first page, and two advertisements from Jewett on the third and fourth pages. In an advertisement signed Geo. W. Light—from Light’s Literary Agency in Boston, the New England agent for several papers, including the Era—readers were told that the book could be purchased at his office. This advertisement was also designed to inform rather than praise, though Uncle Tom’s Cabin was described as “Mrs. Stowe’s Great Story,” issued in two “handsome volumes” with “six well-executed engravings.” The following week, the Era of 1 April carried the same two advertisements by Jewett, Light’s announcement, as well as another advertisement signed “William Harned,” a “Publishing Agent” in New York who carried anti-slavery publications, that announced a “constant supply of this most interesting work” would be kept for sale at the “Depository of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.” The same issue, then, carried the final chapters of the novel and no fewer than four advertisements for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In addition, a note from Bailey emphasized the “thousands of testimonials” received from subscribers during serialization, and lauded the success of the work in book form, for the first edition of 5,000 copies had already been sold and a second printing of the same number had appeared. Era readers certainly For

Harned and anti-slavery publications, see Bailey’s answer to a reader’s query on that point, in the Era of 1 January 1852: 2. According to Wilson, the announcement by retail bookshops of their prospective stocks of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was extremely unusual, and something which “had never happened in advance of the publication of any other American novel” (Crusader, p. 279). The key word here is “American,” as this type of announcement was common for reprints or translations of European works (see note 3 above, for instance). As Meredith McGill notes, American publishers learnt much about advertising when they competed for reprints of foreign, and especially British, works: “Indeed, it was the fiercely competitive reprint publishers who pioneered American book marketing techniques, trumpeting the names and fortifying the reputations of authors as a means of distinguishing their editions from rival reprints” (American Literature and the Culture of Reprinting, p. 17).

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required no convincing that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was worth purchasing in book form. Yet one cannot help but be struck by the number of reminders of the existence of the novel, as well as by the multiplicity of places where—in addition to bookstores—it could be purchased. This can itself be viewed as a form of advertising. These same advertisements were repeated in May and June, but they were modified to accommodate the sales figures of “The Story of the Age.” Jewett did not limit his campaign to the Era. He also advertised in other papers, such as the weekly The Independent (New York), to which Henry Ward Beecher was a regular contributor, and the Olive Branch (Boston), a weekly that advertised itself as “Devoted to Christianity, Mutual Rights, Polite Literature, General Intelligence, Agriculture and the Arts.” In the Olive Branch, Jewett used the same advertisement as he had in the Era prior to the launch of Stowe’s novel, and he ran the advertisement every week in March before announcing staggering sales figures in April and June. The day before Jewett announced the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Boston’s Daily Evening Traveller carried an advertisement by S.K. Whipple, a distributor who sold Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but also Bleak House and other works. Jewett, moreover, bought advertising space in Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular (New York), a trade journal that began as Norton’s Literary Advertiser in May 1851, and carried advertisements by publishers and stationers. Advertisements were very sedate in its first issues, and there was little to catch readers’ attention. Today’s reader must read the small print to notice, for instance, an advertisement by Derby and Miller (Auburn, New York), which announced the fourth edition (15,000 copies) of J.S. Jenkins’s The New Clerk’s Assistant; or, Every Man His Own Lawyer. All the advertisements in Norton followed the same pattern: they listed books and prices, with an occasional word of praise culled from the press. Few advertisements took up an entire column, and few focused on a single title. Jewett began advertising in Norton in September 1851, as did Ticknor, Reed and Fields. Jewett’s first advertisement listed about 40 works, most of them textbooks and practical works, with a few religious titles. Cole’s American Veterinarian. A Treatise on the Diseases of Domestic Animals was touted as “[t]he best work of the kind ever issued from the American press,” and its 33,000 copies issued attested to its popularity. This advertisement, however, adopted the same small print and sedate presentation as those sponsored by the other publishers. Some full-page The work could also be obtained at the Washington offices of the Era, or sent by mail from the same, as Bailey informed his readers (The National Era, 1 April 1852). In spite of his claim that he advertised in Northern papers only (interview in The Manhattan), Jewett seems to have also targeted the mid-West, placing advertisements in papers such as the Michigan Christian Herald: see Chester E. Jorgenson, Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Book and Legend: A Guide to an Exhibition (Detroit, The Friends of the Detroit Public Library, 1952), p. 39. Ad by K.S. Whipple: 22 March 1852; by Jewett: 23 March 1852. Norton’s Literary Advertiser, 15 August 1851. Norton’s Literary Advertiser, 15 September 1851.


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advertisements, by New York publishers Stringer and Townsend, for instance, or Putnam, also listed a series of titles, in the usual small print. The index to volume 2 of what in 1852 became Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular reveals that Jewett advertised in practically every number for 1852; he advertised much more often than Derby and Miller, for example, or Ticknor, Reed and Fields, and about as often as Phillips, Sampson and Putnam.10 In the January 1852 number, the Norton editor drew readers’ attention to the establishment in Cleveland of Jewett, Proctor and Worthington, and predicted the partners’ success “in this locality on the high road to the West.”11 A tiny advertisement by the new firm only mentioned the publication of the first volume of the works of Lyman Beecher. In March 1852, Jewett announced the forthcoming publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but his advertisement also listed the revised edition of a work on architecture. In that particular number of Norton, the Putnam full-page advertisement is much more striking than the small advertisement from Jewett. Yet, even if it could hardly be called eye-catching, Jewett’s campaign prior to the launch of Uncle Tom’s Cabin relied on a handful of the same few tactics—repeating the advertisements, advertising a single title, using hyperbole—a tri-pronged approach rarely employed by publishers of the day. The manner in which publishers advertised new titles in The Literary World (New York) in 1850–1851 is significant in this respect. The size and typography of advertisements were much more diverse than in Norton. Yet when a single title was announced, it was usually in the form of a small advertisement. The few publishers who bought entire columns or whole pages devoted them to lists of books. When, on rare occasions, a publisher paid particular attention to a single title, in an advertisement somewhat “louder” than the others, there was no systematic follow-up. On 2 March 1850, for instance, Ticknor, Reed and Fields advertised Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter: A Romance, to be published on 16 March, using large bold type for the title, somewhat smaller bold type for the author, and the advertisement cut across three columns, taking up roughly one-sixth of the page. But the advertisement was not repeated in the next number of The Literary World. Similarly, in the 23 March 1850 issue, the Harpers took up an entire page to advertise a series of titles, with prominence given, however, to Melville’s White Jacket. The publicity for Melville’s work took up about three-quarters of the page, and made good use of bold type to attract readers’ attention. Yet here again, there was little follow-up advertising. By contrast, Jewett’s advertisements in the Era and other papers occupied less space and may not have been quite so visible. Still, the publisher evidently deemed repetition a good way to prevent the public from forgetting the forthcoming publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the launch of the work was thus carefully prepared. Yet the most innovative part of Jewett’s campain was only to appear after publication, and this in the way the publisher handled the sales figures of the phenomenon that he helped create. 10 This coincides with the increase in the number of titles that Jewett brought out: 30 in 1852 versus 18 for the preceding year. 11 Norton’s Literary Gazette, 15 January 1852, “Changes Among the Trade”: 11.

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After Publication: The Exploitation of Sales Figures Before Jewett, publishers had employed high sales figures as a means of promoting a book, though perhaps more often for textbooks and practical works than for works of fiction, especially American fiction. In The Western Book Trade, for instance, Walter Sutton quotes the advertisement of a Cincinnati publisher and bookseller, for “Eclectic School Books.” According to the advertisement, 700,000 of these books had been sold, clear evidence that “[t]his valuable series of School Books has met with a degree of popular favor believed to be unparalleled in the annals of the country.” The enormous sales figure was repeated in large type towards the end of the advertisement.12 This, in essence, is the method Jewett would bring to full fruition with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Until then, such a marketing strategy had only been employed for American novels in a somewhat laid-back manner.13 The Harpers could thus advertise in The Literary World of 13 April 1850, three weeks after announcing the publication of Melville’s White Jacket, that its printing now exceeded 5,000 copies. They also included excerpts from reviews, a common means of promoting novels. The space devoted to White Jacket was, however, quite limited, since it only occupied the bottom third of a fullpage advertisement for Harper and Brothers.14 Even Susan Warner’s Wide, Wide World, published at the end of 1850 and which took off slowly but then became the bestselling American novel before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, received no unusual promotion from Putnam.15

12 Walter Sutton, The Western Book Trade, pp. 182–3. Sutton notes that the advertisement was repeated in the Cincinnati Advertiser from mid-October to the end of December 1839 (note 27, p. 188). Sutton quotes other examples of the use of sales figures in advertisements, including an advertisement for a popular medical treatise that had sold 25,000 copies in three months in 1847 (pp. 199–200). We have seen above that Derby and Miller, and Jewett himself, quoted high sales figures to indicate the popularity of practical works. For eighteenth-century examples of advertisements for chapbooks based on a similar strategy (more specifically, the fact that several editions had been issued), see Victor Neuburg, “Chapbooks in America: Reconstructing the Popular Reading of Early America,” pp. 81–113 in Cathy N. Davidson (ed.), Reading in America. 13 In France, publisher Charles Gosselin already used sales figures in his advertisements in the 1830s; in 1832, he announced that over 4,500 copies, or three editions, of Balzac’s La Peau de chagrin had sold within a year. See Nicole Felkay, Balzac et ses éditeurs, 1822–1837: Essai sur la librairie romantique (Promodis-Editions du Cercle de la Librairie, 1987), p. 195. 14 Yet, a few months before, the Harpers had been mentioned in the same periodical as the largest publisher in the United States, and perhaps the world; their “unrivalled resources” had been duly noted along with their advertising expenses, roughly $4,000 a year (The Literary World, 5 January 1850: 11–13). 15 Ezra Greenspan, George Palmer Putnam, Representative American Publisher (University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), pp. 253–4. Putnam was to advertise Susan Warner’s second novel, Queechy (1852), much more aggressively (Ibid., p. 258).


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Before Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Jewett himself had run several advertisements in February 1852 in the Olive Branch for a single work that was not a textbook or a practical work. Under the heading “Temperance, Temperance!” the publisher announced that in only six weeks the first edition of Lucius M. Sargent’s Temperance Tales had been sold out.16 Yet this was a timid experiment in view of what was to follow, certainly because the sales figures of the tales were no match for those of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. On 27 March, exactly a week after the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Jewett ran an advertisement in the Daily Evening Traveller to announce—in large bold type— the sale of 5,000 copies in a week, an advertisement he repeated in March and April, and which also ran in the Olive Branch in April.17 When an extraordinary 10,000 copies had been sold in two weeks,18 Jewett bought half a column in Norton’s Literary Gazette and touted the unprecedented event: 10, 000 Copies Sold in Two Weeks! The Great American Tale, Uncle Tom’s Cabin; […] THE STORY OF THE AGE! […] The fact that TEN THOUSAND copies have been sold in two weeks is evidence sufficient of its unbounded popularity. Three paper mills are constantly at work manufacturing the paper, and three power presses are working twenty-four hours per day, in printing it, and more than one hundred book-binders are incessantly plying their trade to bind them, and still it has been impossible, as yet, to supply the demand.19

The advertisement played upon the typography, the use of bold face and capital letters, so that the reader immediately associated the sales figure with the title of the work. The contrast between the number of copies and the short time in which they had been sold was intended to highlight the urgency for the public to buy now. The description of the production of the book hinted at a race against time, while the use of “incessantly” and “constantly” indicated a prodigious effort. The number of machines and men working round the clock in a vain attempt to meet an incredibly high demand made the enterprise nothing short of extraordinary. Jewett handled the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an unprecendented event, a publishing phenomenon. In the same issue of Norton, just below Jewett’s advertisement for Uncle Tom’s 16 The Olive Branch (Boston), 7 February 1852. The advertisement was repeated several times during the month, and was replaced in March by the announcement of the forthcoming publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 17 See for instance, the Daily Evening Traveller dated 27, 29, 31 March, 1, 3, 5, 10 April, and the Olive Branch on 17 and 24 April. 18 Again, since Jewett’s archives have disappeared, there is no way of knowing if these figures are inflated. Charles Johanningsmeier has reminded us that publishers’ figures have to be handled with caution, as advertising strong sales figures is a form of promotion: Fiction and the American Literary Marketplace: The Role of Newspaper Syndicates in America, 1860–1900 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), p. 17. 19 Norton’s Literary Gazette 2/4 (15 April 1852): 73.

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Cabin and occupying the bottom half of the same column, another advertisement was striking in its attempt to sell books by using the same strategy. Publisher George H. Derby, of Cincinnati, resorted to the same typographical devices as Jewett had, to announce “An Extraordinary Sale”: in only 10 days, 1,000 copies had been sold of “The most interesting book of the season,” Sir John Franklin and the Arctic Region. The advertisement clearly rested on the same marketing ploy as Jewett’s, but the fact that it was placed in close proximity to the one for Uncle Tom’s Cabin only highlighted the great disparity in sales. On 15 June 1852, Jewett upped the ante and purchased an entire page in Norton’s Literary Gazette in order to boast of the sale of 50,000 copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in eight weeks. As the advertisement (Figure 1) reveals, all the resources of typography were called upon. Once again, emphasis was laid on enormous sales figures, echoed by the “hundreds of columns” of reviews in the periodical press, and the “thousand” notices. The sale was “unprecedented in the history of bookselling in America,” perhaps not so surprising for a work described as “unparalleled.” When all the issues of Norton are perused, one is struck by how different this advertisement by Jewett is from those of all the other publishers to that time.20 This advertisement was placed in other papers, though it was usually much smaller in size; it appeared, for instance, on a half page in The Literary World of 5 June, and in The Independent (New York) on 3 June 1852. The information Jewett provided was also relayed in newspaper articles usually beginning with, “We are informed by the publishers.” In the Era of 15 April, for instance, announcing that 10,000 copies had been sold, Bailey used almost word for word Jewett’s copy for his own advertisement, explaining how many binders and machines were at work manufacturing the novel. In The Literary World of 22 May, the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin involved no fewer than “three or four of Adam’s power presses,” and “from 125 to 200 bookbinders.” A reader fond of numbers and statistics would doubtless have been pleased to learn the quantity and weight of paper consumed in the enterprise (3,000 reams, 90,000 pounds), and the final weight of bound books (55 tons).21 The same data was provided

20 In more ways than one, Jewett’s advertisements bore some similarity to advertisements for home appliances, drugs, hair-dyes and other such products, which also relied on loud typography and exclamation points (as evidenced in the Daily Evening Traveller for the early months of 1852). The same type of loud advertisement was employed to advertise serials in papers. One of these advertisements read: “$300 novelette, and no prize humbug! Alla Lee, the Odd Fellow’s Daughter; or, The Secret Papers—This most enhancing and soul-stirring story ever published in any American newspaper, will be commenced in THE AMERICAN UNION, January 1852, and published on MONDAY, December 29, by all the periodical dealers at FOUR CENTS per number” (Daily Evening Traveller, 5 January 1852: 2). Placed next to it, Jewett’s advertisement for the works of Lyman Beecher is remarkably discrete, but it is quite possible the publisher may have decided to try a technique until then reserved for “cheap literature” or products other than books. 21 “Literary Intelligence,” The Literary World (New York), No. 277, 22 May 1852: 367.

Figure 1


Norton’s Literary Gazette 2/6 (June 1852). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society.

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for readers of The Independent (13 May 1852), and the sales figures found their way into the advertisements of New York publishing agent William Harned.22 On 10 June, The Independent announced that Uncle Tom’s Cabin consistently sold 10,000 copies a week, and that the Mercantile Library in New York had to keep purchasing copies in order to satisfy its patrons. A total of 46 copies were now circulating among the “future merchants of New York.”23 On 11 June, William Lloyd Garrison, writing in The Liberator, relayed Jewett’s information that “the eightieth thousand edition” was to come out the following day and wondered at the number of volumes—160,000— produced in such a short time as 11 weeks. Garrison computed that the sale was unprecedented in the United States and possibly the world.24 On 3 June, Frederick Douglass’ Paper had reprinted a similar news item from the Essex County Freeman. On 17 June, the National Anti-Slavery Standard provided its readers with data culled from The Liberator of the preceding week, and assessed the actual number of readers at half a million—a conservative estimate, according to the author of the article.25 Jewett continued to keep the American public abreast of the sales figures of the novel. In October, and again in November, the publisher announced, “120,000 Copies, 240,000 Volumes sold already in America. The sale in England and on the Continent is unprecedented.”26 Jewett then decided to include sales figures in Europe to leap to a round one million in his advertisement for a cheap edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A full-page advertisement in Norton (Figure 2) bore in enormous letters the line “An edition for the Million.” Jewett accounted for the name of this edition by explaining that a total of one million copies of the work had been printed in six months in the United States and Europe.27 On the anniversary of its publication, March 1853, Jewett announced that 305,000 copies had been sold in the United States and that the demand continued without abatement. At “the ordinary book-rate of one thousand 22 The National Era, 17 June 1852. Harned repeated the advertisement during the summer. 23 The Independent, 10 June 1852: 95. In Norton dated 15 September 1852, the author of an article entitled “Uncle Tom and His Followers” mentioned the figure of 80 copies circulating in a library he knew of (p. 168). 24 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Liberator, 11 June 1852, UVa web. 25 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” unsigned article reprinted from the Essex Co. Freeman, Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 3 June 1852; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” unsigned article (Sidney Howard Gay), National Anti-Slavery Standard, 17 June 1852, UVa web. 26 The Independent, 4, 11 and 18 November. The same figure is given in Norton dated 15 October 1852 (p. 203). 27 Norton, December 1852: 248. The striking figure of a million was already put to good use by other publishers, though it usually hinted at the number of readers rather than of copies of a particular work; thus, the weekly story paper The Flag of Our Union, proudly boasting in 1850 of an unrivalled circulation among American weekly papers, called itself “A PAPER FOR THE MILLION” (see, for instance, the number dated 23 February 1850). Putnam headed a full-page advertisement “Books Suited for Six Millions of Readers in the United States” (Norton, February 1852: 40).

Figure 2


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Norton’s Literary Gazette 2/12 (December 1852). Courtesy American Antiquarian Society

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copies to an edition,” and taking into account a rough number of 300 business days, this meant that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had sold an average of an edition a day since its initial publication.28 From December 1852 on, however, sales figures were less often mentioned in Jewett’s advertisements, which were now almost entirely devoted to the new editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin about to come out. Sales figures found their way on the title page of the editions, reassuring buyers that they were following in the wake of many others.29 Sales figures were also to be found in advertisements placed in paper-bound editions of Key.30 And, naturally, sales figures were prominent in the handbills and posters that Jewett printed.31 Once again, by examining Norton during Jewett’s campaign, one realizes the success of his strategy, best illustrated by the fact that other publishers followed his lead. In August 1852, an advertisement by Putnam announced high sales figures (75,000 volumes sold) for three works, two of them by Susan Warner, The Wide, Wide World and Queechy, and the third (Dollars and Cents), by her sister Anna Warner; though Putnam used large bold type for the figures, he placed the information at the bottom of the page, where it attracted perhaps less attention than the figures in Jewett’s advertisements, usually placed at the top.32 George H. Derby, whose advertisement had been dwarfed by Jewett’s in Norton’s April issue, counter-attacked in July, and took out a full-page advertisement in the same style as Jewett’s for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Again, however, the figures were no match for Jewett’s. In big bold type and with many exclamation points, Derby announced a first printing of 5,000 copies and advance orders of 3,000 for Life at the South; or, Uncle Tom’s Cabin as It Is, one of the many fictional answers to Stowe’s novel. The typography of the advertisement attracted the readers’ attention to “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” however, and the advertisement may have served Stowe’s book rather than the work advertised. As a matter of fact, in the index to the volume of Norton, the advertisement was credited to Jewett, and not George

28

“A Year’s Work,” reprinted from the Congregationalist, in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 22 April 1853, UVa web. 29 The note on the title page indicating the number of editions printed was already used by publishers as a sign of popularity: an 1851 reprint of The Wide Wide World (published by Putnam) thus bears “Fourth Edition,” while an 1852 reprint of the same work features “Sixteenth Edition” on the title page. 30 For instance, in an edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (306,000) and Key bound in one volume. The text is headed, “The Great Book! Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” The publisher announces the sale of 300,000 copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (copy at the AAS). 31 Kirkham reprints one of these handbills in The Building, p. 191. It exploits the same marketing ploys as the newspaper advertisements, such as big bold type to announce the sales figures. If, as is likely, Jewett operated in the same way as Ticknor, Reed and Fields, he probably sent handbills and posters to bookstore managers: see W.S. Tryon, Parnassus Corner: A Life of James T. Fields, Publisher to the Victorians (Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1963), p. 182, and Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing, vol. 1, p. 399). 32 Norton’s Literary Gazette, August 1852: 164.


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H. Derby.33 This relatively unsuccessful attempt to capitalize on the fame of Stowe’s novel was duly noted by a contemporary commentator, who remarked that Life at the South; or Uncle Tom’s Cabin as It Is, “notwithstanding its deceptive title,” had “sunk into its grave, without any other result than somewhat to increase the popularity of the book it was intended to destroy.”34 Jewett was to resort to somewhat similar strategies for A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, claiming, for instance, that he had received so many advance orders that he had been forced to postpone publication. In order to meet public demand, he announced a first edition of 20,000, then 40,000 and eventually 60,000.35 Yet Jewett’s most similar campaign to the one for Uncle Tom’s Cabin was undertaken for another bestselling novel, The Lamplighter, by Maria Cummins, published in 1854. Jewett touted it as “The Great American Romance”; “20,000 copies in Twenty Days!”36 Some contemporary reviewers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin ascribed no insignificant part of the popularity of the book to the publisher’s marketing hype. The Literary World believed that the anti-slavery sentiment in the United States and England accounted for the initial popularity of the work. What happened next was, however, entirely different and unrelated to the issue of slavery: “The curiosity awakened by so great a popularity in the first instance, stimulates interest, and readers flock in and follow the crowd.” George Graham attributed much of the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to “the proclivity of human nature to fall in with a growing rumor and to swell a sudden fashion.”37 Jewett’s use of sales figures to boost the novel’s popularity set such a trend, in fact, that as early as 1856, the American Publishers’ Circular and Literary Gazette, which had succeeded Norton in 1855, noted that, “this thing has been overdone, and

33 For further examples of publishers following in Jewett’s footsteps, see Susan Geary, “The Domestic Novel as a Commercial Commodity: Making a Best Seller in the 1850s,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 70/3 (1976): 365–93. Geary pays special attention to the Mason Brothers’s campaign for Fanny Fern’s Ruth Hall in 1854, and argues for a close link between advertising and promotion and sales. Richard Brodhead claims that these promotional campaigns, notably Jewett’s for Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Mason Brothers’s for Ruth Hall, produced public demand for these works, “demand which was then republicized as a way of creating further demand.” The books were promoted as popular, and their popularity “became the basis of their market identity.” Richard H. Brodhead, Cultures of Letters: Scenes of Reading and Writing in Nineteenth-Century America (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1993), p. 157. 34 “Speech of Hon. Geo. W. Julian, at the Free Democratic State Convention, Held at Indianapolis, May 25, 1853,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 29 July 1853, UVa web. 35 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, “Uncle Tom Abroad,” 1 April 1853; “Uncle Tom’s Key,” 22 April 1853, UVa web. 36 Broadside, HL. See also Kelley, Private Woman, Public Stage, p. 24. 37 “The Uncle Tom Epidemic,” The Literary World, 4 December 1852: 305; “Black Letters; or Uncle Tom Foolery in Literature,” Graham’s Magazine (Philadelphia), February 1853, UVa web. Both periodicals were strongly critical of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

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the announcement, ‘5,000 sold in five days,’ or ‘12,000 in advance of publication,’ does not produce the effect it once did.”38 Book Reviews, Puffs, and Other Marketing Ploys The same article of the American Publishers’ Circular described the limits of another marketing tool, the use of laudatory book reviews, to promote a particular work: The mere announcement of a book may not create a desire to read it, while, if a large number of testimonials to its merits are presented, this may be accomplished. […] A favorite method of advertising books has been to bring testimony to their merits, by quoting the favorable things which the newspapers have said of them. This method has lost much of its force with the public, however, from the fact that newspapers have been so indiscriminate in their praises.39

In The Profession of Authorship in America, William Charvat places the review copy, as well as the review itself, at the heart of the promotion system in the United States during the first half of the nineteenth century. He explains that publishers sent out copies for review along with blurbs, or puffs; they also attempted to persuade friendly newspaper editors or writers to write up books they brought out. James T. Fields was a master of this sort of promotion, and occasionally wrote puffs himself.40 Most likely, Jewett followed his lead in that respect. In the Manhattan interview, the publisher claimed that he had sent advertisements to most of the Northern newspapers, with notices of the book written by himself. In a letter to her husband, Isabella Beecher Hooker noted that Stowe was quite aware of this, for “She has been behind the curtain & knows where the puffs come from ….”41 Jewett sent out copies for reviews to various newspaper and magazine editors,42 though the number of copies 38

“Where, When, and How to Advertise,” American Publishers’ Circular and Literary Gazette, 22 March 1856: 174. 39 Ibid. 40 William Charvat, The Profession of Authorship in America, 1800–1870, The Papers of William Charvat, ed. Matthew J. Bruccoli (Columbus, Ohio State University Press, 1968), Chapters 3 and 10. For Fields, see also Tryon, Parnassus Corner, Chapter 9. This type of collusion between book publishers and the periodical press was common in France, too (see Roger Chartier and Henri-Jean Martin [eds], Histoire de l’édition française, Vol. 3, Le temps des éditeurs: du romantisme à la Belle Epoque [Fayard, Cercle de la Librairie, 1990, 1st edn 1985] p. 260), and Balzac denounced the system in his Illusions perdues (1843); in England, for indulging in similar practices, publisher Henry Colburn was known as the “Prince of Puffers”: see John Sutherland, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction (Stanford, CA, Stanford University Press, 1989), p. 137. 41 Isabella Beecher Hooker to John Hooker, 26 June 1852, Isabella Beecher Hooker Collection, HBSC. 42 An article on the illustrated one-volume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin opens with, “We are indebted to the enterprising publishers of this world-thrilling work, Messrs. John P. Jewett


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mailed cannot be ascertained. Sparing no pains to promote the work, Jewett even went to Washington to recommend the novel to members of Congress.43 Jewett’s advertisements made good use of laudatory press reviews. As he had stressed the incredible sales figures of Stowe’s novel, so the publisher emphasized the extraordinary number of references to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in newspapers and magazines, a point easily confirmed by a survey of the periodical press of the time. Jewett’s advertisements sometimes employed American, sometimes British reviews. Depending on the space he had bought, he multiplied or reduced the number of blurbs. In his full-page advertisement in Norton (Figure 1), Jewett chose to quote over 30 papers and magazines from diverse areas of the country.44 The number and diversity of the papers were evidently meant to convince readers that the novel was universally praised—just as the sales figures informed them that it was universally liked. Hyperbole, like italics, abounded in these excerpts which underlined the power of the work to move its readers, and its effect on the anti-slavery cause. They also emphasized that the success of Stowe’s work cut across class, gender and sectional lines. In The Independent of 4, 8 and 11 November 1852, respectively, Jewett chose to focus on British reactions to the novel. Under the heading, “WHAT THEY THINK IN ENGLAND, OF ‘UNCLE TOM’S CABIN’,” Jewett quoted 26 newspapers and magazines from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The excerpts praised the narrative, referring to its “thrilling anecdotes,” producing an “intensely exciting interest.” The notices also lauded Stowe’s denunciation of slavery as “the most graphic exposure of American slavery ever published,” one that “will, we believe, do more towards ridding America of the foul stain of slavery, than has yet been done by any other book.” The literary qualities of the work were not overlooked: “the pathos of ‘Paul and Virginia’”; “the minuteness of observation and of structure of Dickens”; the work was seen as “skilfully constructed and tastefully written.” The American press had commented abundantly on the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Britain. The Independent itself had reported on the success of Stowe’s novel in England a month before, and on 4 November, the weekly carried both Jewett’s advertisement and a “Letter from an American in England,” which dwelled at length on the extraordinary sensation Uncle Tom’s Cabin had created in England. The work was read everywhere, in “the palace of Queen Victoria, the castles of earls, dukes and lords, the mansions of the rich and the cottages of the poor.”45 In The Independent, the article on the British reaction to

& Co., for a copy of the superb Illustrated Edition …” (The Liberator, 17 December 1852, UVa web). 43 Charles E. Stowe, Life, p. 162. 44 In The Literary World of 5 June, Jewett bought half a page and only quoted from roughly 10 reviews. Extracts from reviews were also printed in advertisements in the editions themselves. 45 “‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in England,” The Independent, 21 October 1852; “Letter from an American in England,” The Independent, 4 November 1852, UVa web.

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Jewett’s advertisement for the novel, with its excerpts from British reviews, echoed and reinforced one another. Curiously, after the last excerpt from the British press, Jewett added two extracts from Southern testimonies, using bold type to announce, “We have an abundance of Southern Testimony in Favor of Uncle Tom.” He first quoted a Washington paper that presented Stowe’s novel as “a new and extensive means of influence” on the subject of slavery. A Southerner then testified to the truth of the portrait of slavery in the novel, though he somewhat undermined his position with his opening statement, “Although I have not read every sentence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin ….” It is difficult to understand why Jewett included two Southern testimonies in an advertisement devoted to British reactions. The contemporary reader may have wondered at how few were the testimonies when the publisher claimed to have an “abundance” of them, a fact made all the more strange inasmuch as neither quote made a strong statement for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. One of the excerpts from the British press compared the novel to both Paul and Virginia and Dickens’s works. Interestingly enough, Stowe’s novel, Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s novel were all enormously successful and the source of an impressive array of what we would today call “tie-ins.” After Paul et Virginie was published in 1788, its popularity was such that its characters appeared on articles of clothing as well as bracelets; women adopted hair styles “à la Virginie,” parents—especially mothers—called their children after the heroes of the novel.46 Some 50 years later in England, the success of Dickens’s Pickwick Papers (1836–1837) brought forth an amazing range of byproducts, such as “Pickwick hats, canes, cigars, fabrics, coats, song books, china figurines, Weller corduroys and jest books, and Boz cabs.” Moreover, “[t]here were imitations, plagiarisms, parodies, sequels, extra illustrations, Pickwick quadrilles, stage piracies and adaptations.”47 Succeeding works by Dickens, The Old Curiosity Shop, for example, were also the source of merchandizing. An 1852 article in The Liberator aligned Stowe, Dickens, and de Saint-Pierre as the initiators of new subjects fit for painters and sculptors: “I infer, from seeing these elegant and expensive works [statuettes of characters from Uncle Tom’s Cabin] in the shop windows with Paul and Virginia, Little Nell and Undine, not only that the general heart of humanity has been touched by them as by their predecessors, but that they have an established market value, and that people 46 Introduction; Author’s preamble to the fourth edition, Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie (Maxi-Poche, Classiques français, PML, 1993), pp. 8 and 14. The novel was dramatized, parodied and, through its translations, became famous across Europe. A half-century later, Eugène Sue’s Mysteries of Paris (1842–1843) also gave birth to such diverse products as songs, dances, clothes, and gingerbread. The names of the principal characters were used to baptize flowers, but also horses, cows, and dogs. Sue’s portraits and autographs were eagerly sought after: the writer himself had become a star: Jean-Louis Bory, Eugène Sue, dandy mais socialiste (Paris, Mémoire du livre, 2000, 1st edn 1962), pp. 346–60. 47 Robert L. Patten, “Introduction” to Charles Dickens, The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (Penguin Classics, 1986, p. 19).


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of wealth and taste now begin to seek such works as the ornaments of their parlors and chambers.”48 That such a popular work as Uncle Tom’s Cabin should have been the source of byproducts, or “Uncle Tomitudes,” is not really surprising.49 What is unusual, however, is that one of the first, if not the first byproduct of what was to become a veritable Uncle Tom industry was commissioned by Jewett himself. In a letter to her husband, Isabella Hooker noted that, “One of the ways in which Jewett has spread the fame of Uncle Tom is by sending Whittier fifty dolls [sic] to write a few verses about Eva ….”50 Jewett then paid Manuel Emilio to compose the music for Whittier’s poem, and published the song, which sold for 25 cents. Whittier’s poem, entitled “Little Eva: Uncle Tom’s Guardian Angel” was printed in The Independent in July 1852.51 According to Forrest Wilson, “by the end of June agents were hawking the song on Broadway surrounded by knots of bearded and beaver-hatted gentlemen eagerly buying the sheets to take home to their loved ones.”52 The song was also printed on muslin handkerchiefs, which Jewett may have given out to customers as bonuses.53 In addition to songs, which soon multiplied, and engravings, paintings and statues, the commercialization of objects around the novel included decorative spoons, plates, scarves printed with scenes of the novel, puzzles and card games in which children had to bring the slave families together, and other items of the same kind.54 Some 30 years later, looking back on the early history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Jewett noted that his business partner and his friends all thought he had lost his mind. They could not understand why the publisher was “throwing away a large sum of good money in insane advertising.” But, Jewett explained, “I answered that I knew what

48

“Uncle Tom in Painting and Statuary,” The Liberator, 23 December 1852, UVa web. “Undine,” a fairy tale by German writer Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, was first published in Germany in 1811; it was translated into English in 1818 and was extremely popular in Britain, where many painters chose it as a subject. 49 See Stephen A. Hirsch, “Uncle Tomitudes: the Popular Reaction to Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” pp. 303–30, in Studies in the American Renaissance 1978, ed. by Joel Myerson (Boston, Twayne Publishers, 1978). Hirsch examines the byproducts, or merchandizing, around Stowe’s novel. 50 Isabella Beecher Hooker to John Hooker, 26 June 1852, Isabella Beecher Hooker Collection, HBSC. 51 See Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 224–5 and note 35 p. 440. The Liberator praised the song on 2 July 1852, UVa web. Whittier was corresponding editor of the Era. 52 Wilson, Crusader, pp. 295–6. 53 These items and many other “Tomitudes” can be viewed at: http://www.iath.virginia. edu/utc/tomituds/tohp.html 54 Hirsch, “Uncle Tomitudes,” pp. 312–18. Save for the allusion to the films, the following criticism of the marketing of Harry Potter can also apply to Uncle Tom’s Cabin: “It’s being peddled every which way. It’s a movie, it’s a toy, it’s a book, it’s a phenomenon …. It’s a ‘brand’ in the derogatory sense of that word”: Rex Murphy, “I Hate Harry,” The Globe and Mail (Toronto), 16 July 2005: A 15.

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I was about. And the result convinced the most incredulous that there was method in my madness.”55 Jewett created none of the advertising and promotional strategies that he used for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Sales figures had already been adopted as a marketing ploy, so had puffs, and even advertisements for a single book. Publishers were accustomed to working behind the scenes and calling upon their network of friends in the press to write favorably of their publications. Byproducts had long existed, too. Jewett’s innovation was, however, to make use of all these tools for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He therefore brought a battery of marketing ideas and tactics to bear upon a single work. Anticipating today’s marketing blitzes, Jewett literally flooded the public with announcements, information, hype, and reminders of and about Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He helped make the book a phenomenon, and was assisted in no small measure by the American press. After all, such popularity was news, and readers had to be informed. Reportage, then, provided free advertising for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Given the advertisements, posters and handbills, the newspaper notices and reviews, the theatrical adaptations (also mentioned in the press), the many fictional and nonfictional answers to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the controversy Stowe’s novel created, the threat of a lawsuit over a footnote,56 the American reader of 1852 would have had to live as a hermit not to be aware of Stowe’s anti-slavery work. In more ways than one, Jewett had kept his promise to Calvin Stowe, namely, that he “would spare no pains nor expense nor effort to push the book into an unparalleled circulation.”57 Coda: Stowe and the Promotion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Prefaces and Introductions Stowe participated in the promotion of the novel and the anti-slavery cause, first by sending out copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to a number of political and literary figures in England, including Charles Kingsley, Charles Dickens, Prince Albert, and Lord Carlisle. “The very oddity of the fact that an American woman has sent them a book may inspire some curiosity,” she felt.58 The recipients duly acknowledged the gift, and Lord Carlisle even provided a laudatory preface to one of the English editions of the novel.59

55

The Manhattan: 30. Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture on the reception, adaptations, and “Anti-Uncle Tom Literature.” The question of the footnote will be handled in the next chapter. 57 See note 45, Chapter 2. 58 HBS to Horace Mann, (day ?) March 1852, Horace Mann Collection, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston. 59 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, London, G. Routledge, 1852. Some of these letters were printed in Stowe’s introduction to the 1879 American edition of the novel. 56 See


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While authorial prefaces are meant to fulfill several functions, first and foremost to ensure a proper reading of a text, they also represent a form of promotion.60 In addition to the preface included in Jewett’s 1852 editions, Stowe wrote no fewer than four prefaces aimed at European readers. They accompanied an English edition (London, Bosworth, 1852), an English language edition published by Tauchnitz in Germany (1852), and two French editions (Paris, Librairie Nouvelle, 1853; Charpentier, 1853). All of Stowe’s prefaces expressed a similar concern: that readers should believe in the truth of the representation of slavery provided in the novel. The writer also used prefaces to answer specific attacks. In England, for instance, she had been criticized for drawing a parallel between the condition of slaves and that of laborers. In the preface included in Bosworth’s edition, she justified the parallel, while also quoting from various documents to answer charges that some of the characters were improbable. In a way, Stowe’s prefaces continued the dialogue between the author and her readers, which had begun with the serialization of the work. In her prefaces, Stowe always reaffirmed the truth of her portrayal of slavery, as well as the contradiction between slavery and the Christian religion on the one hand, and the founding principles of the nation on the other hand. Yet her “statements of intent” could vary considerably according to the country she addressed.61 The prefaces to the French editions are a case in point. In the Charpentier edition, Stowe expressed her grateful emotion at “the enthusiastic sympathy with which the beautiful land of France has responded to the call of brotherhood & liberty in the person of the American slave.”62 This invitation to read the novel as a manifesto against slavery was in keeping with the reading guide provided in the American preface (“The object of these sketches is to awaken sympathy and feeling for the African race …”),63 as well as the British and European ones: “The book,” she noted in the preface to Bosworth’s edition, “is an appeal to the public sentiment of a common humanity: it presents in this last high court the cause of an injured and helpless race ….”64 However, to the French public who bought the Librairie Nouvelle edition, she presented the book in a quite different manner: “In the Author’s own country the work had a special & local errand & object. But deeper than that local & temporary design of the book lies another applicable to all countries and all times.” Stowe then went on to explain that the story of Uncle Tom is that “of the relation of the human soul […] to that divine Redeemer by whom it becomes powerful glorious & divine.”65 A first explanation to this reading guide lies in the various functions Stowe assigned her audiences. She called upon English public opinion to exercise an influence over 60

On the roles of prefaces, see Gérard Genette, Paratexts, Chapters 9 and 10. Gérard Genette, Paratexts, p. 221. 62 La Case de l’Oncle Tom (Paris, Charpentier, 1853), translated by Louise Swanton Belloc. I am quoting from the English manuscript held at the HBSC (Katharine S. Day Collection). 63 Jewett’s first edition (1852), p. vi. 64 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (London, Thomas Bosworth, 1852), p. vii. 65 La Case de l’Oncle Tom (Paris, Librairie Nouvelle, 1853), translated by Léon Pilatte. I am quoting from the English manuscript (Collection Acquisitions, HBSC). 61

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the United States (“The public sentiment of the generous and just in England cannot but act powerfully in America”).66 She expected those Europeans who intended to migrate to the New World, to “come prepared heart, hand, and vote, against the institution of slavery.”67 French readers were assigned the more indirect—but no less important—role of uniting their prayers to those of Americans in order to bring about the downfall of slavery. The definition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a religious parable might also be owing to Stowe’s desire to ensure a wide and lasting audience for the novel. France had abolished slavery in 1848, and a French reader might have felt little concern over American slavery. By redefining the aim of the novel, Stowe meant to make Uncle Tom’s Cabin “applicable to all countries and all times,” as she pointed out in the preface to the Librairie Nouvelle edition. The same desire may have been present from the first, prompting her to change the subtitle of the work, from “The Man That Was a Thing,” to “Life among the Lowly.” Much later, when she wrote her introduction to the 1879 American edition, Stowe was to offer a similar reading guide to a new generation of Americans. While Uncle Tom’s Cabin could be used as a testimony to a past wrong (her first American preface already hinted that after slavery, readers could peruse the work for “memorials of what has long ceased to be”),68 the novel was primarily defined as a religious one. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe explained in her introduction, illustrated the power of religion to “enable the poorest and most ignorant human being, not merely to submit, but to triumph ….” She concluded, “a story which carries such a message as this can never cease to be a comforter.”69 The deliberate targeting of specific audiences, the universal and timeless reading guide demonstrate that Stowe intended to play a part in the promotion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, both in the United States and abroad, and ensure its survival when the institution which had caused its inception would finally belong to the past.

66 Bosworth

edition, p. viii. Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Leipzig, Bernh. Tauchnitz, 1852), Collection of British Authors, No. 243 and 244, p. x. 68 Jewett’s first edition, 1852, p. viii. 69 Introduction to the 1879 edition, p. xc. 67

Chapter 4

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Book, 1852–1853 Uncle Tom is not only a miracle of itself, but it announces the commencement of a miraculous Era in the literary world. […] Such a phenomenon as its present popularity could have happened only in the present wondrous age. It required all the aid of our new machinery to produce the phenomenon; our steam-presses, steam-ships, steam-carriages, iron roads, electric telegraphs, and universal peace among the reading nations of the earth. But beyond all, it required the readers to consume the books, and these have never before been so numerous … —Charles Briggs, “Uncle Tomitudes,” Putnam’s Monthly, January 1853

Technological improvements cannot by themselves account for the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Yet new technologies in book manufacturing, added to the improvement of distribution networks, and the increase in the nation’s number of readers did, as Charles Briggs noted, make it possible for the work to become what would later be called a bestseller. When Jewett published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he chose to have the work stereotyped. Manufacturing stereotype plates was almost twice as costly as setting from type, but stereotyping, which had appeared in the United States in the second decade of the nineteenth century, allowed for quick reprints of a book. Because of heavy initial investment, however, stereotyping in the early 1850s was usually reserved for books the publisher deemed likely to sell well. Thanks to the flexibility of the process,

Unsigned article (Charles Briggs), pp. 97–102. As we know, the word first appeared in the United States at the end of the nineteenth century, when The Bookman began printing a monthly list of bestsellers (Alice Payne Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers, 1895–1965 (New York, R.R. Bowker, 1967), p. 2. Before stereotyping and electroping were developed in the 1840s, type was scarce. When a work had been printed, the type was redistributed and used for another work, which meant that for a second edition, the work had to be recomposed. See Ronald J. Zboray, A Fictive People, pp. 9–10. Ticknor, Reed and Fields set The Scarlet Letter from type for the first two editions, and had the work stereotyped for the third and succeeding editions, when it appeared that the book was doing well: Michael Winship, “Hawthorne and the ‘Scribbling Women’: Publishing The Scarlet Letter in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” Resources for American Literary Study (Spring 2001): 3–11; for a discussion of new technologies in the first half of the nineteenth century, see Volume 3 of A History of the Book in America (The Industrial Book, 1840–1880), forthcoming.

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Jewett was able to issue a second printing of 5,000 copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as soon as the first was exhausted (within two days), and then to bring out numerous reprints in the subsequent months. Charles Briggs included steam presses among the technological developments that allowed such a “miracle” as Uncle Tom’s Cabin to take place, and Jewett’s advertisements note that three presses were at work day and night to print copies of Stowe’s book. Steam presses accelerated and multiplied the number of sheets that could be printed at one time. Papermaking machines, which came into widespread use in the 1830s, allowed paper to be produced continuously rather than sheet by sheet. New machines made some binding operations faster, while others continued to require an abundant labor, which explains why Jewett claimed that over a hundred bookbinders were “incessantly plying their trade” to bind Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As in other industries, the mechanization of tasks and the invention of new processes opened the way to the mass production of books as well as to a decrease in their sale price. Titles issued by American presses increased from around a hundred a year in the 1830s to 879 in 1853, and over a thousand in 1855. The value of books made and sold in the United States leapt from $5.5 million in 1830 to $12.5 million in 1850 and $16 million in 1856. The growth of the American book industry and the concomitant explosion of periodicals were stimulated by a hefty demand for reading matter. A high birth-rate associated with massive immigration—some five million immigrants arrived in the United States between 1820 and 1860—brought the population to over 23 million in 1850 and almost 31.5 million in 1860. The expansion of public education in the first half of the nineteenth century meant that, by the 1850s, most native-born white Americans were literate. The emergence of an urban middle “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The National Era, 1 April 1852; Wilson notes that 3,000 copies sold on the first day, with the remaining 2,000 being purchased the following day (Crusader, p. 281). Jewett had a series of plates made by Hobart and Robbins (New England Type and Stereotype Foundry), and the printing was carried out by George C. Rand (Wood Cut and Book Printer, Boston). On the back of the title page of the two-volume edition, the mention of the stereotype maker and printer varied, probably because, as Jewett claimed in his advertisements, printing Uncle Tom’s Cabin required several presses and “Multiple plates demanded all the slugs Rand had in his shop”: E. Bruce Kirkham, “The First Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Bibliographical Study,” The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 65/4 [October– December 1971]: 365–82. See Zboray, A Fictive People, Chapter 1, for the impact of technological developments on workers, publishers, and authors. Jewett’s advertisement ran in Norton, 2/4 (15 April 1852): 73. John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 1, p. 221. On the expansion of literacy, see William J. Gilmore, Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780–1835 (Knoxville, The University of Tennessee Press, 1989), and Lee Soltow and Edward Stevens, The Rise of Literacy and the Common School in the United States, A Socioeconomic Analysis to 1870 (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1981).

Uncle Tom’s Cabin: The Book, 1852–1853

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class that could afford to purchase more reading matter and enjoyed more leisure to read also accounted for the increased demand for books. At the same time, decrease in prices (the result of mechanization and mass production) made books available to a greater part of the population. Jewett’s marketing of Uncle Tom’s Cabin took into account the fragmentation of the American public, and the publisher accordingly provided a variegated public with a variety of formats. Jewett first targeted what can be defined loosely as the middle class. To this segment of the reading public, he offered a two-volume edition in three different bindings. In December 1852, he brought out two one-volume editions, each aimed at very different audiences: an inexpensive pamphlet edition for what Jewett called “the masses”; the other, a luxurious, profusely illustrated edition, intended for the upper middle class. There is no doubt that this targeting of different audiences increased the overall readership of the work. The Two-Volume Edition The first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in three different bindings, paper for $1, cloth for $1.50 and cloth full gilt for $2.10 The diversity of the offer was not unusual for the time. In 1848, Putnam, for example, offered Washington Irving’s works in a variety of bindings and prices. In the 1840s, a volume of poems by Longfellow could be bought for 12 cents, 50 cents, or 75 cents; well-off Americans could also choose between different bindings for a luxury edition of the same work, with prices ranging from $3.50 to $7.11 Dickens’s work was also available in many formats, bindings and prices.

The extent of the “democratization” of books is still debated by book historians and researchers. Cathy N. Davidson notes, for instance, that Susanna Rowson’s Charlotte Temple (according to Davidson, “America’s first best-selling novel”) sold in very many different editions in the mid-nineteenth-century, some of them as inexpensive as 10 cents, “a price that virtually all classes of American citizens could afford.” Cathy N. Davidson, “Introduction,” Susanna Rowson, Charlotte Temple (New York, Oxford University Press, 1986). According to James D. Hart, in the early 1840s, almost everyone could afford to own the works of Dickens, available in pamphlet form at 25 cents a volume (The Popular Book, p. 103). In contrast, Ronald J. Zboray argues that technological developments did not really lead to a democratization of reading and that American books remained too expensive for workers in the antebellum period, save for a certain type of literature: Frederick Gleason, the owner of The Flag of Our Union, brought out paper-covered editions of American novels, tales of “sex, romance, adventure, and violence,” for as little as 12 cents: Ronald J. Zboray, A Fictive People, pp. 11–12 and p. 31. 10 According to Tebbel, 50-cent clothbound books were common in the antebellum period, and when a work was simultaneously issued in cloth and paper, a frequent practice in the midnineteenth century, the prices were likely to be 75 and 50 cents, respectively (A History of Book Publishing, vol. 1, p. 245). 11 Ezra Greenspan, George Palmer Putnam, pp. 226–7; Charvat, Literary Publishing, pp. 71–2 (the different editions of Longfellow’s work were issued by different publishers). In a growing market economy, Zboray notes, “That the publisher of a successful novelist seldom

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Though simultaneous publication in paper and cloth was common, publishers were more likely to offer a variety of bindings for titles that were already popular or those the publisher believed would do well. Jewett had stereotyped Uncle Tom’s Cabin, issued a large print run of 5,000 copies of the first edition,12 and offered the work in several bindings, with illustrations. Clearly, he expected a success. The price of the edition, from $1 to $2, reveals that Jewett targeted the middle class. At a time when skilled white male workers earned an average wage of $1 a day (women workers earned about a quarter of that), even the paper-covered edition would have proved too expensive for workers.13 No remaining archives indicate the proportion of paper, cloth and cloth, full gilt copies that were brought out by Jewett. More than likely, the more expensive copies were manufactured in limited numbers.14 The American buyer could choose among various colors for the cloth edition; the $1.50 edition came in purple, brown, and black; the $2 edition was available in green, red, lavender, blue, and black.15 The front and back covers were stamped with a vignette (in gold on the front cover) that also graced the title page, and which depicted the cabin and its inhabitants. The spine bore, in gold letters, the title of the work, the name of its author, “H.B. Stowe,” the number of the volume, and the name of the publisher, “J. P. Jewett & Co.,” which became “Jewett & Co.” from the edition bearing the statement “Twentieth Thousand.” On some copies, the spine carried no publisher’s name at all. In addition to the differences in the credits on the spine, the cloth was sometimes smooth, sometimes ribbed, and the decoration of the front and back covers could also differ from one copy to another. The vignette was sometimes framed in a rectangle, sometimes in an oval, while additional motifs were made of either floral or geometric designs or issued his or her work in a single type of binding suggests the importance of the book as commodity” (Ronald J. Zboray, A Fictive People, p. 11). 12 According to Michael Winship, the average size of the first printing of new works by Ticknor and Fields increased from fewer than 1,100 copies in 1849 to well over 2,000 by the end of the 1850s. Winship ascribes the increase both to the fact that the now-established house was able and willing to take greater risks, but also to the improved networks of transportation in the 1850s, which made it easier for the firm to distribute more copies of a new work outside New England (American Literary Publishing), pp. 58–9. In an article reprinted from the Congregationalist in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1,000 copies is quoted as “the ordinary bookrate” for an edition (“A Year’s Work,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 22 April 1853, UVa web). 13 See Zboray, A Fictive People, p. 11. Greenspan quotes the price of $1.25 for a volume of Irving’s work (a clothbound duodecimo, the same format as Uncle Tom’s Cabin) as affordable to “middle-to-upper-middle class” readers in 1848 (George Palmer Putnam, p. 226). 14 Such was the practice of Ticknor and Fields : “A few copies of many of the firm’s publications were issued in more expensive extra gilt cloth bindings, as well as a variety of leather gift or presentation bindings” (Winship, American Literary Publishing, p. 130). 15 See Jacob Blanck, Bibliography of American Literature, vol. 8, ed. Michael Winship (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1990), p. 73. Also see E. Bruce Kirkham, “The First Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Bibliographical Study”: 368–9, and David A. Randall and John T. Winterich, “One Hundred Good Novels,” Publishers’ Weekly (18 May 1940): 1931–33.


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a combination of both. This variety is evidently owing to Jewett’s having employed different companies to bind Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as he noted in his advertisements.16 The variety also suggests that Jewett allowed binders a certain freedom in carrying out their work. The cloth, full-gilt copies displayed the same variety as those regular clothbound. Some of the full-gilt copies were relatively discrete, with a few gold geometric motifs, while others presented an exuberance of gold foliage and floral ornamentation. In contrast with this “orgy of gold,” as one commentator put it,17 the paper edition was quite plain. The white front cover carried the usual vignette framed in a rectangle formed of stylized garland, and it contained the title, author and publisher’s name. The “thousandth” slug appeared on the title page, not the front cover, which prominently displayed the price of the edition (“Price $1.00 for Two Vols.—Vol. I.”). The back cover of Volumes 1 and 2 featured the same extract from Jewett’s catalogue, entitled “Valuable Books, Published by John P. Jewett and Company, 17 & 19 Cornhill, Boston, & Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, Cleveland, Ohio.” The spine only carried the title of the work, in very large type, and the words “Volume I” or “Volume II.” The “thousandth” statement on the title pages of the two-volume edition was discrete in its typography. However unobtrusive, though, the slug stood as a reminder to buyers and readers that the work was a bestseller. In the first volume, Stowe’s preface was numbered (iii) to viii, and followed by a table of contents, numbered (ix) to x. Somewhat illogically, the novel itself started on page 13, most probably because Jewett had expected Stowe to write a longer preface.18 The first volume ended with the conclusion of Chapter 18, the last page numbered 312. The second volume was more logically numbered, with the title page followed by a table of contents numbered (iii)–iv, the text proper starting on page 5 and ending on page 322. In some copies, the last page of the novel was followed by 12 pages from Jewett’s catalogue, which included Uncle Tom’s Cabin and displayed the sales figures of the novel together with excerpts from laudatory reviews, recycled from Jewett’s advertisements. Jewett chose a rather large type for the preface and a smaller one for the text. The edition was carefully manufactured; the type was clear and legible, and the presence of illustrations added to the feeling that here was a fine example of bookmaking. In addition to the vignette of the cabin on the cover and title page, six illustrations—three per volume—graced the edition.19 16 The American Antiquarian Society holds the account book of one of these companies, Boynton and Marshall for 1850–1852. They were stationers and booksellers in Framingham, Massachusetts, but also bound books. They bound various works for Jewett, including Lyman Beecher’s, and starting in May 1852, bound a few hundred copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at a price of three cents a copy. Mss. Dpmt Folio vols. “B,” AAS. 17 Quoted in Wilson, Crusader, p. 281. 18 Kirkham, The Building, p. 173. 19 In his advertisements, Jewett had announced “six elegant designs by Billings engraved by Baker.” Nowhere in the volumes themselves did Jewett mention the names of the artist and engraver. The title page vignette bore the signatures of Baker and Smith (the one-volume edition

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The illustrator, Hammatt Billings, had begun a career as a book illustrator in the 1840s in Boston, and by 1852 had worked for a number of Boston publishers, including Ticknor, Reed and Fields, Little and Brown, and Phillips, Sampson. Jewett was certainly acquainted with his work and may have picked this particular artist because of his abolitionist sympathies. Billings had, after all, illustrated the third masthead of The Liberator in 1850.20 Whether Jewett and Billings discussed the choice of scenes to be illustrated cannot be ascertained. No evidence suggests that Stowe participated in the selection of illustrator, or of scenes to be illustrated.21 The cover and title page vignette did not correspond to any specific scene of the novel. Stowe described the cabin at the beginning of Chapter 4, and Billings decided to depict the cabin along with its inhabitants. He drew a picture of quiet domestic happiness, with the children playing in front of the cabin, their father returning from work, a hoe on his shoulder, while the mother was preparing dinner. This happiness would soon be ended by the sale of Tom. In keeping with Stowe’s strategy, the vignette provided a perfect representation of the cruelties of a system that denied slaves the simple joys of a family life. Philip Fisher’s commentary on the title of Stowe’s novel perfectly applies to the illustration: “In fact the key detail is that, from the first act of the novel on, Tom no longer lives in the cabin and never returns there. It is therefore the place where he isn’t, the home that he doesn’t occupy […] The title therefore asserts his homelessness.”22 In each volume, the three full-page illustrations were placed opposite the passage they illustrated. The two plots of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Tom’s journey towards the deep South and his death, and George, Eliza and Harry’s journey towards the North and freedom—were given roughly equal attention. The first illustration, which depicted Eliza announcing to Uncle Tom that he has been sold, brought the two plots together. The second also indirectly evoked the two stories: it illustrated the auction sale in illustrations were to be engraved by Baker, Smith and Andrew), like the three illustrations in the second volume, while the three engravings of the first volume only bore the signature of Baker. This might indicate that in the hierarchy of employment, the engraver occupied a higher position than the artist, an idea supported by the fact engravers were better-paid than artists. Thus, when in 1852 Billings illustrated Recollections of My Childhood, and Other Stories, by Grace Greenwood (published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields), Billings received $6 and Baker $12 for each of the six illustrations. Similarly, for the four illustrations of Hawthorne’s True Stories from History and Biography, also published by Ticknor, Reed and Fields in 1851, Billings was paid $40, while Roberts, the engraver, received exactly double this amount. See Sinclair Hamilton, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, 1670–1870 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1958), pp. 74–5. 20 See James F. O’Gorman, Accomplished in All Departments of Art, Hammatt Billings of Boston, 1818–1874 (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1998), pp. 47–8 and 234–5. 21 According to James F. O’Gorman, Jewett, who deemed the addition of illustrations would foster the sales, was probably the one who selected Billings (Accomplished, p. 47). 22 Philip Fisher, Hard Facts: Setting and Form in the American Novel (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 119–20.


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Chapter 12, which Haley attends; but it also brought in the second plot with, to the right of the picture, part of a poster bearing the words “Run Away/George Ha.” The fourth and fifth illustrations related to the story of Uncle Tom proper, while the third and sixth depicted George and Jim’s fight against the slave hunters and the arrival of George, Eliza, and Harry in the promised land of Canada. Billings’s illustrations eschewed the sensationalism that would later become so pervasive in the illustrations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The engravings were faithful to the text, and played their part in denouncing slavery. Depending on the political slant of author and intended audience, representations of slaves in the antebellum period often tended to be caricatural, or to show passive victims sorely in need of help from Northern whites.23 In contrast, Billings presented readers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with individuals who were neither stereotyped nor submissive and fearful. Errors, Corrections, and the Problem of the Parker Footnote Jewett issued a first print run of 5,000 copies, then another print run of the same size, both of which sold out within two weeks. A few changes were made between the first and second printings. Some spelling or grammar mistakes were corrected; in Chapter 4, for instance, “sorel colt” became “sorrel colt” and in Chapter 23 “cathecism” was changed to “catechism.” These corrections may have been made by the publisher or the printers. Other modifications could have been due to the author who, for example, changed “vicinity” to “region” in a sentence in Chapter 42 in which the word “vicinity” appeared twice. Two changes were clearly made by the author; in Chapter 4, Chloe addressing the baby, says, “Get away, Mericky, honey.” However, in Chapter 44, Chloe refers to the child as “Polly.” This inconsistency may have been pointed out to Stowe, who chose to replace Mericky with Polly in Chapter 4. The most significant modification, however, was doubtless ordered by the author. In Chapter 45, Stowe quotes the following example of a successful free black in Cincinnati: “W-. Threefourths black; barber and waiter; from Kentucky; nineteen years free; paid for self and family over three thousand dollars; deacon in the Baptist church.” Stowe modified the end of the sentence to read: “[…] over three thousand dollars; worth twenty thousand dollars, all his own earnings; deacon in the Baptist church.” This sudden aggregation of money was in keeping with Stowe’s desire to “show the self-denial, energy, patience, and honesty, which the slave has exhibited in a state of freedom.”24 23 See Marcus Wood, Blind Memory: Visual Representations of Slavery in England and America, 1780–1865 (New York, Routledge, 2000). 24 Quotation page 628. See Jacob Blanck, Bibliography of American Literature, vol. 8, p. 74, for a complete list of corrections and changes. Jewett omitted the thousandth statement from the second issue of the first edition. As a result, no copies bear a “Fifth Thousand” mention. According to Blanck, the alterations appeared in the edition with a “Tenth Thousand” slug, and Blanck argues that this edition is in fact the second run of 5,000 copies that Jewett brought out. Jewett would have mixed sheets from the first two issues and stamped “Tenth Thousand” on the title page. However, in “The First Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Kirkham uses eight

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Some mistakes, however, were to endure: “swet” for sweat, “peacably” for peaceably, “shope” for shop “I got took in in” for I got took in by, and “grad” for glad.25 Chapter 8, titled “Eliza’s Escape” in the table of contents, carried no heading in the text, and in the title of Chapter 19, Ophelia was spelled “Ohpelia.” These mistakes remained uncorrected in all of Jewett’s two-volume editions, the last of which is dated 1853 and bears the slug “Three Hundred and Eighth Thousand.” This is all the more surprising as some of the mistakes were rectified in the inexpensive one-volume edition (“peaceably” and “shop” were correctly spelled, Chapter 8 found its proper heading, and Ophelia’s name was restored). The luxury one-volume edition, which, like the cheap edition, came out in December 1852, corrected “swet,” “peacably,” and “shop,” but retained “I got took in in” and “grad.” Chapter 8 still lacked a heading in the text, but Ophelia was spelled correctly. It is rather strange that the corrections should have been made in only some editions: the last printing of the two-volume edition was issued after the inexpensive and the luxury one-volume editions, which corrected a number of mistakes, yet it did not include these corrections. These inconsistencies may be accounted for by the great number of re-issues of the work in 1852 and the early months of 1853. Jewett, pressed by time, may have overlooked the mistakes and Stowe, at work on A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, may have unintentionally followed suit. In Chapter 12, a footnote attributing a quotation to Reverend Joel Parker also had a variegated history. Its very existence led to the threat of a lawsuit and to a violent controversy in the press.26 In Chapter 12, Stowe described the slave trade as “the vital support of an institution which an American divine tells us has ‘no evils but such as are inseparable from any other relations in social and domestic life.’” The quotation, in italics, was attributed in a footnote to “Dr. Joel Parker of Philadelphia.” Lucy has just been told that Haley has sold her baby, and a horrified Tom hears the conversation between Haley and Lucy. Stowe ironically observes that had Tom “only been instructed by certain ministers of Christianity, he might have thought better of it, and seen in it an every-day incident of a lawful trade.” The quotation follows this remark. Calvin had alerted his wife to the potential trouble the note may cause, and corrections and alterations to differentiate the first and second printings of 5,000 copies. Looking at different copies of the edition without a “Thousand” slug reveals that some include the modifications while others do not. It is therefore clear that there were two issues of the edition, the second including the modifications (which, however, does not invalidate Blanck’s thesis that Jewett may have mixed sheets in copies bearing the “Tenth Thousand” slug). For a discussion of whether Jewett or Stowe was responsible for the corrections and changes, see Kirkham’s “The First Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” 25 Respectively: Chapter 6, p. 101; Chapter 11, p. 187; Chapter 30, p. 469; Chapter 31, p. 484; Chapter 33, p. 502 (all page numbers refer to the 1986 Penguin Classics edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin). See “Note on the Texts,” in Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Minister’s Wooing, Oldtown Folks, ed. Kathryn Kish Sklar (New York, Library of America, 1982), p. 1474. 26 Wilson details the story in Crusader, pp. 281, 284–90, 294, 303–22. See also Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 225–30.


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Harriet had asked Jewett to remove it, which the publisher either had forgotten or lacked the time to do in the rush of the first few weeks of publication. On 8 May 1852, Parker wrote to Harriet, under cover of a letter to Calvin, asking for “a full and public retractation.” Calvin tried to placate him, expressed his regret over the incident and explained that, on his advice, his wife had resquested that the publisher remove the note. On 19 May, Parker sent another letter, directly to Harriet this time. He reminded her that he was a long-standing friend of the family, had given no provocation, and that the quotation was all the more injurious as the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had spread it across the country. He ended his letter with the threat of a lawsuit. Harriet eventually referred Parker to her brother, Henry Ward Beecher. By the end of June 1852, the conflict had become public. The quarrel was given special prominence by two rival religious weeklies in New York, the anti-slavery Independent (Harriet Beecher Stowe had been announced as a new contributor in May and Henry Ward Beecher was already a regular contributor) and the pro-slavery Observer. Harriet agreed to publish a retractation, which appeared in various papers, including the Era, the Tribune (New York), and The Independent. The retractation was followed by a note in which Parker declared himself satisfied. However, Parker then accused Henry Ward Beecher of having sent the retractation without waiting for his approval. Henry Ward Beecher defended himself in turn, but found himself accused of forgery in the Observer. By the fall of 1852, the controversy filled entire columns in the American press. In October, The National Era defended Stowe and Beecher against the “dastardly attack” by Parker. According to Bailey, Parker, following a mercenary impulse, was suing for $20,000 in damages, “understanding, we suppose, that this would be about the amount that Uncle Tom might yield her [Stowe].”27 The following week, Bailey reprinted the Beecher/Stowe/Parker correspondance respecting the controversial footnote.28 On 7 October 1852, The Independent devoted a page and a half to the topic, also reprinting letters and concluding in Stowe’s favor. The New York Times also gave considerable space to the dispute before siding with Stowe as well.29 The Parker affair was significant in several ways. The public controversy not only contributed to the fame of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, but also confirmed its popularity. Parker had not been alarmed by the quotation in the text of the Era, either because he was unaware of it, or because he thought a footnote in a paper devoted to the anti-slavery cause and with a limited audience could hardly do great damage to his reputation. The same footnote in a bestseller could, however, cause a great deal of harm. The Parker affair is also revealing in respect to the Beecher/Stowe family relationship. Stowe gave her brother full responsibility to handle the negotiations; her father, Lyman Beecher, supported his daughter and assured Calvin that Parker had indeed uttered the words attributed to him. Calvin attempted to avoid a scandal by conciliating both parties.30 The exchange of letters clearly demonstrates that Calvin did not hold the 27

The National Era, 14 October 1852: 166. 21 October 1852: 172. 29 See Wilson, Crusader, p. 324. 30 Wilson, Crusader, p. 314. 28 Ibid.,

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kind of sway over his wife Parker supposed and, rather than turn to her husband, the writer sought her brother’s advice. Yet had Parker followed up on his threat, Calvin, rather than Harriet herself (a married woman could not sue or be sued), would have been the one taken to court. The whole affair also indicates that Stowe never shrank from open controversy when she deemed that she was in the right.31 In a letter to her brother, she announced her intention to write an article on the links between church and slavery, and Parker’s reaction was evidently seen as a challenge she was eager to meet: “You will see by this article how much afraid I am—I would gladly have been silent, he would make me speak—Now he shall hear me out & the world shall hear what atrocious things have been said in the name & authority of Christ by his church in this country.” She asked her brother to keep this letter to himself, for she had poked fun at the editor of the Observer and playfully ended her letter with “a little fun in this dismally solemn world is as good as a little wine for the stomach’s sake.”32 The Parker footnote was not removed immediately from the two-volume edition. It was still included in editions slugged “Sixtieth Thousand.” In those bearing the words “Seventieth Thousand,” the footnote had disappeared, but the quotation was still printed in italics with quotation marks, and preceded by “an American divine tells us.” In editions stamped “Eightieth Thousand,” however, italics and quotation marks had been removed and the words “some American divines” preceded what no longer looked like a quotation.33 In fact, it took a little over a month for Jewett to remove the offensive footnote.34 The footnote was absent from all succeeding editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin until 1893, the year its copyright expired. It then reappeared in the last decade of the nineteenth century, before being printed in most editions issued in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, respectively. The Two Editions in One Volume Of the two one-volume editions, the illustrated version is probably the one Jewett planned first. As early as October 1852, he advertised it in Norton under “Superb Gift Books.”35 The inexpensive edition, on the other hand, was only advertised from the beginning of December. Reissuing a popular work in more luxurious clothing 31

“The guilt of the man is appalling,” she notes, but “right will prevail.” HBS to Henry Ward Beecher, 16 October 1852, HBS Microfilm Collection, YL. 32 HBS to Henry Ward Beecher, 1 November 1852, HBS Microfilm Collection, YL. 33 The note was removed from the one-volume editions which came out in December 1852. 34 In a letter to William Lloyd Garrison dated 3 June 1852, Jewett announced that the 70,000th was being sold and that the 80,000th would be ready the following Saturday. John P. Jewett to William Lloyd Garrison, 3 June 1852. Garrison Papers, Ms.A.1.2.21.25, Boston Public Library/Rare Books Department. Courtesy of the Trustees. 35 Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular, 15 October 1852: 200. Jewett also ran this advertisement in The Independent (for instance, in the issues dated 2 and 9 December 1852).


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was common, and the profusely-illustrated edition was to appear during the strategic holiday season. Jewett’s profits from the two-volume edition made it possible to commission a work that would be costly to manufacture. And the edition had to be planned well in advance for the illustrator and engravers to do their work. Jewett’s advertisements notified the public that the book would be published on 1 December, but more likely the illustrated edition hit bookstores in mid-December, at roughly the same time as the inexpensive edition.36 The idea to publish a cheap edition had been suggested by a National Era reader in the 15 April 1852 issue, just a few weeks after Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in book form: UNCLE TOM’S CABIN Dr. Bailey: You will confer a favor on the public by hinting to the publishers of Mrs. Stowe’s great work that a cheap edition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” would be acceptably received. Practical printers tell me that an edition in smaller type than that used in the bound volumes, in paper covers, might be afforded for about thirty-seven and a half cents per copy. Many would buy one at that price, who hesitate at paying a dollar. It is a work which should be extensively circulated, and such an edition ought to be issued. G. By all means [Bailey replied]—let a cheap edition be published. It is a work which should have the largest circulation. 37

Frederick Douglass’ Paper of 27 May 1852 printed an account of a recent meeting of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. The Society had discussed a resolution proposed by one of its members, who suggested that “the publisher [of Uncle Tom’s Cabin] be requested to publish a cheap edition for the people, at 37 cents.” This, however, was deemed unrealistic and the resolution was withdrawn. As Lewis Tappan, one of the founders of the Society, pointed out, “It is rather too much of a good thing to expect the publisher to do this, when he is selling a thousand copies per day, at $1.50.” 38 Yet the resolution (and the Era reader’s suggestion) demonstrates an awareness of a segmented audience with unequal purchasing power. The abandonment of the resolution by the Anti-Slavery Society also shows that at least some of its members realized that the interests of a publisher did not necessarily coincide with those of the public. 36 In the 17 December The Liberator, the reviewer who commented on the illustrated edition had evidently just received a copy from the publisher. As the article also mentions the cheap edition, it is logical to conclude that the two editions came out at roughly the same time: “Splendid Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” unsigned article, The Liberator, 17 December 1852, UVa web. Norton, however, announced the cheap edition as issued in “New Editions” (15 December 1852: 242), while the illustrated edition was only mentioned as out on 15 January 1853 (“New Editions,” p. 9); the edition was reviewed in the same number (“Notes on Books,” p. 5). 37 The National Era, 15 April 1852: 3. 38 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 27 May 1852, UVa web.

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In a delayed answer to these suggestions, Jewett announced in the 16 December 1852 Independent his intention to publish a cheap edition priced at 37½ cents. The curve of the sales figures of the two-volume editions explains why Jewett decided to launch an inexpensive edition at the end of 1852.39 Between March and December 1852, sales of the novel averaged 20,000 copies a month, with a strong concentration of sales in the months immediately following the initial publication. Jewett had advertised the sale of 50,000 copies in eight weeks (The Literary World, 22 May 1852). In October, the publisher announced the sale of 120,000 copies, that is 240,000 volumes (Norton, 15 October 1852). According to Calvin Stowe, sales totalled almost 150,000 copies by 15 November.40 Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin continued to sell briskly, sales had fallen below 20,000 a month by November 1852, and Jewett evidently deemed the time had come to target a new audience. Anticipating today’s custom of repackaging a hardcover book as a paperback once it has achieved its maximum audience, Jewett only launched the cheap edition when it seemed to him that the sales of the initial two-volume edition had peaked. He was only to re-issue the two-volume edition twice during the following months, with title pages bearing the following notations: “Two Hundred and SixtyThird Thousand,” and “Three Hundred and Eighth Thousand.” The latter was the ultimate and highest “thousandth” statement in Jewett’s editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Beginning in December 1852, therefore, Jewett marketed the two new editions to two specific audiences: the 37 cent volume to the “masses” and the high-end edition for the moneyed classes who could afford what Jewett’s advertisement described as “one of the most splendid volumes […] ever issued from the American press.” Jewett touted the two editions in widely different fashions. His advertisement in The Independent was headed “Superb Gift Books,” and listed two works for the holiday season. The first, Heaven and Its Scriptural Emblems, by Rev. Rufus W. Clark, boasted five original designs by Billings. The new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was described as follows: “Re-stereotyped in one octavo volume, with steel portraits of Mrs. Stowe and ‘Little Eva,’ and illustrated with One Hundred Original Designs, by Billings; engraved in the highest style of Wood Engraving, by ten of the most distinguished artists in America. It is our intention to make of this one of the most splendid volumes, as to its engravings, its paper, printing, and binding, ever issued from the American press.” The book was offered in three different bindings at escalating prices: $2.50 for cloth, $3.50 for cloth with gilt edges, and $5 for Turkey (leather). At these prices, only the upper-middle and upper classes would have been able to buy such a work, especially in its more sumptuous binding. Jewett’s 39 Since the edition bearing the “Tenth Thousand” slug, Jewett had ordered printings of 5,000 or 10,000 copies (10,000 or 20,000 volumes): runs of 5,000 between the 10,000th and the 30,000th, then of 10,000 between the 30,000th and the 70,000th, and 5,000 again until the edition stamped “One Hundredth and Twentieth Thousand,” the last issue of the two-volume edition before the cheap one appeared. See Appendix 2. 40 Letter printed in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co., Run and Read Library, Popular Illustrated Edition, c. 1857, p. v.


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advertisement for the luxury edition was accordingly devoted to the celebration of the book as a luxury item, a commodity. Contrary to the relatively discrete advertisement for the luxury edition, the advertisement for the cheap edition was clearly meant to strike the reader’s eye, especially in the full page Jewett took out in Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular (Figure 2). The illustration, together with the repetition of “The Million,” in various types, could hardly fail to catch attention. Jewett’s marketing strategy rested on three main elements: 1) the incredible figure of a million; 2) the very low price of the edition; and 3) the very lyrical text itself.41 The aim of the cheap edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was clearly explained as an effort to allow “the living masses” access to the work. Underlying this was the idea that price had so far been the only obstacle to near-universal sales of the book. Jewett positioned himself as a benefactor of the masses, almost a philanthropist, since he offered the American public at large the long-anticipated opportunity to read Stowe’s work. The word “million,” reiterated several times, and always in capital letters, served as another marketing ploy. The popularity of the work was used as evidence for its quality: if a million copies had been bought, it necessarily followed that it was a remarkable book. Praise had become superfluous, and Jewett therefore merely alluded to the work as “unrivaled.” If Jewett chose to emphasize sales figures rather than laudatory reviews, the passage that followed was unexpected in its lyricism. Jewett borrowed the rhythm of an Old Testament prophet to predict the glorious march of the work: And millions will now read it and own it, and drink in its heavenly principles, and the living generations of men will imbibe its noble sentiments, and generations yet unborn will rise up and bless its author, and thank the God of Heaven for inspiring a noble woman to utter such glowing, burning truths, for the redemption of the oppressed millions of our race.

Carried away by his own enthusiasm, the publisher even seems to have counted himself a slave, referring to “the oppressed millions of our race.” The ad, with all its bombast, repetition, and tone of exaltation, suggests that the publisher had left free rein to his inspiration, in a sort of frenzy born of incredible sales figures.42

41 In Norton of December 1852, a number of full-size engravings adorned advertisements.

In addition to Jewett, Scribner, Putnam, and Redfield used illustrations in their advertisements, presumably to give readers a sample of the engravings of their works, while Henderson and Co. chose to illustrate their advertisements with an engraving of their store in Philadelphia. The idea of illustrated advertisements seems to have come to the minds of several publishers at exactly the same time, in this number where advertisements were largely devoted to books for the holiday season. 42 This exaltation was short-lived, however, and gave way to a more sober tone when Jewett turned to mundane matters such as the material description of the new edition.

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The “Edition For the Million!” The paper-covered edition was cheap in every possible way. Its front cover loudly proclaimed the name of the edition, “An Edition for the Million!” and the title of the novel, in large bold type, completely dwarfed the name of the author. The number of copies “already published in America” figured prominently. The back cover featured an extract from Jewett’s catalogue which, like the text of the novel itself, was printed in two columns. The title page reproduced the same information as the front cover, omitting only the number of copies in circulation. The edition was dated 1852 or 1853, and some copies bore 1852 on the front cover and 1853 on the title page. The edition bearing the statement “265,000 copies” was the first whose title page carried, besides the usual mention of John P. Jewett (Boston) and Jewett, Proctor and Worthington (Cleveland), the name of Sampson Low, Son and Co., a London firm that was Stowe’s authorized English publisher.43 For the cheap edition, Jewett employed the same stereotype and printing companies as for the two-volume edition. The 166-page volume included Stowe’s preface, printed in one column, which distinguished it from the text proper, the table of contents, and the novel itself, which was printed in two columns in very small type. Little attention had been given to the printing (the type was often too pale, for instance, or blotched) or the cutting of the sheets (pages sometimes missed the first or last line). The text was densely packed on the page, and there were of course no illustrations. In self-celebratory fashion, the novel was followed by a page entitled “The Great Book! Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” with praise excerpted from American and British papers. It differed from a similar page in the two-volume edition in its use of loud typography. In the two-volume edition, bold type was reserved for the title of the novel, whereas the cheap edition resorted to bold type in several places. A potential buyer, whose eye would have been arrested by the bold type on the front cover, as well as the “million,” and the impressive number of copies published in the United States, could have felt reassured in his choice by realizing he had purchased “The Great Book!” The inexpensive edition was complete and unabridged, and it corrected some mistakes of the two-volume edition. The pamphlet-sized volume stood in marked contrast, however, to Jewett’s advertisement copy: “This edition is very neatly printed in a large octavo pamphlet ….” Given the poor quality of its layout and printing, the edition was obviously intended to appeal to a public enticed by big and bold type and repetition. The middle-class reader, on the other hand, who was not asked to decipher small print or guess at the beginning or end of an occasional sentence, enjoyed periodic breaks from reading thanks to

43 As Sampson Low’s partner, Edward Marston, recounts, Stowe received the visit of two British publishers in the fall of 1852; Low arrived first and received permission from the writer to publish her works in England. Samuel Beeton (who was to become a full partner in the firm of Clarke and Co.) arrived at Stowe’s just as Low was leaving. See E. Marston, After Work: Fragments from the Workshop of an Old Publisher (London, W. Heinemann, 1904), p. 60.


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illustrations. This educated public evidently did not need typography or repetition to feel purchasing the book was a sound decision. Before the two new editions came out, the American press had reviewed Uncle Tom’s Cabin for literary style, contents, and potential social consequences rather than the way the book was manufactured, except in so far as this related to the difficulty of producing a great number of copies. The appearance of the two new editions, however, led to several commentaries on the volumes proper. The publication of the illustrated edition naturally gave rise to more discussion, yet The Liberator also noted the publication of the cheap edition. Jewett had advertised the illustrated edition as a beautiful artefact, while his advertisement for the cheap edition emphasized the role the novel could play in the debate over slavery. The reviewer for The Liberator, perhaps Garrison himself, adopted the same strategy. After praising the “good paper and large fair type” of the 37½ cent edition, the critic also found a lyrical tone to recommend it “to the patronage of ‘the Million’”: Let it be circulated far and wide, till it shall have penetrated “every log-house beyond the mountains,” and been perused by every individual who can read, from the child six years old to the aged veteran whose sight is not yet wholly extinct,—touching every heart and moistening every eye, and swelling the tide of feeling and sentiment against the hideous system of slavery, until it becomes irresistible, giving freedom to all in bonds, and peace and reconciliation to the whole land.44

The audience for this particular edition was thus extended to the whole of the United States and to every age group in the nation. To that immense public rather than to the limited number of buyers of the luxury edition, devolved the fight against slavery. Like Jewett himself, the Liberator reviewer defined diverse functions and publics for the different editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Illustrated Edition Jewett had announced a beautifully manufactured volume, with 100 original designs engraved by 10 engravers. The book came out in December 1852, even though the title page gave 1853 as the year of publication, and was indeed profusely illustrated.45 Its steep price was justified not only by the numerous engravings, but also by the quality of the bindings and the paper. The volume was thick and heavy, and evidently meant for the coffee table or the shelves of a private library. On the front and back covers, a gold vignette depicted Jesus blessing Uncle Tom, who was lying on the ground half naked, with a jug and a whip next to him. Sambo and Quimbo, his tormentors, each had a knee on the ground. On the spine, gold foliage and flowers framed the title and 44

“Splendid Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” unsigned article, The Liberator, 17 December 1852, UVa web. 45 The title page of the edition diversely listed Baker and Smith, or Baker, Smith and Andrew as the engravers.

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author, as well as the mention “Illustrated Edition.” Above “Jewett & Co.,” two small gold vignettes depicted Chloe at the cabin’s door and Little Eva. The impression created by all this would have been very different from that of the two-volume edition. If the vignette of the cabin, with its quiet family scene, could deceive the reader into thinking a possible happy ending awaited, the cover of the new edition made clear from the start that the main character would die. Now, too, the religious aspect of the book was emphasized, as was its anti-slavery content. Inside the volume, a portrait of Stowe was placed as a frontispiece opposite a portrait of Eva.46 The reader thus gazed upon the writer, who in turn faced the character she had created. Stowe’s signature was reproduced below her portrait, as if to guarantee the authenticity of the engraving, while adding a personal touch to the volume.47 The title page was devoid of illustration; also conspicuously absent was the usual “Thousand” slug, as though that form of promotion were unsuitable in a luxury edition. Like the other two editions, the luxury edition included Stowe’s preface, distinguished by the use of a larger type font. In contrast to the cheap edition, the text was printed in rather large, clear and legible type on thick paper. The margins were wide, allowing the text breathing space. The volume included no full-page illustrations. Billings designed headpieces for the chapters, illuminated initials, small vignettes and tailpieces.48 There were so many illustrations, in fact, that the reader’s attention was constantly solicited, in what appeared as a practical application of Stowe’s intent, namely, “to show” the horrors of the system. Relatively little room was left for the reader to imagine characters or scenes, as so many of them were interpreted for him. The reading of each chapter was guided by the headpieces, functioning as so many epigraphs. For this edition, Billings reworked a number of his designs for the two-volume edition, notably George and Jim’s fight againt the slave hunters, or Eva reading the Bible to Tom. But many scenes found their first—American—rendering in this volume: George teaching Tom how to read, Eliza’s flight across the Ohio River, Eva placing a wreath of flowers around Tom’s neck, and so forth.49 46 The character of Little Eva acquired new prominence, with portraits on the spine and inside the volume. Jewett was following a trend he had helped create by commissioning a poem on Eva. The poem by Whittier had become a popular song. Other songs celebrated Eva, and many of the byproducts of the novel focused on her character. 47 On the cult of writers in Victorian society and the vogue for portraits of writers, see Mary Lynn Stevens Heininger, At Home With a Book: Reading in America, 1840–1940 (New York, Rochester, The Strong Museum, 1986), p. 23. 48 For Paul C. Gutjahr, the use of illuminated letters to begin each chapter evokes the Bible, which he explains was “the most prominent volume to boast illuminated letters in the United States in this period.” Paul C. Gutjahr, “Pictures of Slavery in the United States: Consumerism, Illustration, and the Visualization of Stowe’s Novel,” pp. 77–92 in Elizabeth Ammons and Susan Belasco (eds), Approaches to Teaching Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York, The Modern Language Association of America, 2000). 49 James F. O’Gorman notes that Billings’s images possess “both erotic and sacred connotations”; he refers to the engraving of Eva putting flowers around Tom’s neck. Eva is


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This second series of drawings by Billings differed from the first one in no inconsiderable ways. In the new edition, George, Eliza and Harry seem to be white, whereas the first edition left no doubt as to their race. At the beginning of Chapter 3 (Figure 3), the three characters are shown seated in a middle- to upper-middle-class environment and, save for their clothes, nothing distinguishes them from the Shelbys, who are portrayed in another illustration. Uncle Tom appears strong and muscular in some of the engravings, but is shown as old and humble in front of St Clare. In her initial manuscript, Stowe had described Eliza as a “mulatto”; she then changed her character to a “quadroon” in the text she gave the Era. 50 This “whitening” of Eliza may have made it easier for the contemporary reader to identify or at least sympathize with the character. Billings’s decision to make Eliza and George appear white may have obeyed the same concern. The transformation of Uncle Tom, however, remains puzzling. The vision of Uncle Tom as old and feeble became widespread in theatrical adaptations of the novel, but not in those—the first in a long series—which opened in the United States in August 1852. According to Harry Birdoff, the first such rendering of Tom was owing, not to an American theater troupe but to a French company: in an 1853 French adaptation by Dumanoir and d’Ennery, Tom was interpreted by an actor who was about 55.51 A similar transformation occurred in the United States during the summer of 1853, when a commentator noted that Tom appeared on stage as a “subdued old negro.”52 Yet even before theatrical adaptations, and in advance of the second series of illustrations by Billings, some reviewers described Uncle Tom as an older man. Norton’s critic noted in May 1852 that, “You can hardly fail to like old ‘Uncle Tom,’ a sort of patriarch among the blacks, for his simplicity, fidelity, and excellence of character.”53 According to Thomas Gossett, the vision of Uncle Tom as an old man may be due to several factors: Tom’s patience might have been difficult to associate with a younger man; in minstrel shows, the only characters with any dignity were old African Americans; at a time when life expectancy was shorter,

sitting on Tom’s knees, and the image of close physical intimacy must have been distressing to both northern and southern segregationists. The illustration of Tom saving Eva from drowning, on the other hand, depicts them in the “sanctifying aureole” formed by the hands and poles of rescuers on the boat. According to O’Gorman, the contradiction between erotic and sacred “must stand as representative of the complexity of both Stowe’s text and Billings’s illustrations” (Accomplished, pp. 57–8). 50 Kirkham, The Building, p. 156. Kirkham argues that, for the reader, this defines Eliza’s background, education, and color more clearly. 51 See Harry Birdoff, The World’s Greatest Hit: Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York, S.F. Vanni, 1947), p. 167. 52 See Thomas Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, p. 279. This particular adaptation was written by George C. Aiken and performed by his cousin, George C. Howard’s company. The actor playing Uncle Tom was white. 53 Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular, 2/5 (15 May 1852): 86.

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the definition of “young” and “old” was quite vague; finally, the representation of Tom as an old man was reassuring as he could pose no sexual threat to Eva.54 In the twentieth century, critics would attack Stowe for having created whites in blackface in the characters of George and, more especially, Eliza, and for having made Tom an old, weak, and docile man. Theatrical and movie adaptations doubtless bear part of the responsibility for Tom’s premature dotage, but it might well be that Billings’s illustrations also played a role in later depictions of Uncle Tom. There is no evidence that Stowe participated in the choice of illustrations for this edition. In November 1852, Sampson Low, Stowe’s authorized English publisher, inserted the following advertisement in The Publishers’ Circular, the British equivalent of Norton: THE AUTHOR’S ILLUSTRATED EDITION OF UNCLE TOM’S CABIN, Profusely illustrated under the direction of the Author, from Drawings from Nature, by Artists who have for some time been engaged in the study of the Habits and Manners of the Slaves of the United States.

This edition was none other than Jewett’s illustrated edition, announced in the Publishers’ Circular in the list of works published between 15 and 30 December 1852. That this announcement credited Billings for the illustrations somewhat invalidates what Sampson Low’s advertisement noted about “Artists,” and consequently his claim that the illustrations were designed “under the direction of the Author.”55 We know that Stowe would pay a great deal of attention to illustrations in her future works. She herself painted and drew, and designed some of the illustrations for the account of her 1853 European journey, Sunny Memories (1854).56 And she had very specific ideas about what should and should not be illustrated in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When, for example, she saw a whipping scene on the cover of a British edition brought out by C.H. Clarke and Co., she wrote to the publisher in September 1852, to express her disapproval in no uncertain terms:57 54 Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, pp. 279–80; Hannah Page Wheeler

Andrews notes that theatrical adaptations transform Tom into an old man so that his decision not to flee slavery is due simply to his lack of strength to escape; from a brave man, the character becomes pathetic: “Themes and Variations: Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Book, Play, and Film,” unpublished PhD Dissertation, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 1979. O’Gorman argues that, under the influence of Jim Crow laws and generalized racism, Uncle Tom was later “visually transformed from Stowe’s and Billing’s virile father into the benign ‘old uncle’ who had bedeviled twentieth-century criticism (James F. O’Gorman, Accomplished, p. 55). The transformation, however, was already at work in Billings’s own renderings of the character. 55 The Publishers’ Circular (London), 1 November 1852 and 1 January 1853, respectively. 56 The other illustrations in the work were executed by Billings. 57 A gold vignette on the front cover depicted a black man whipping a female slave who was stripped to the waist, while a horrified boy looked on. Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Negro Life

Figure 3


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Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Illustrated Edition (Jewett, 1853). Illustration by Hammat Billings. Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

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The Publishing History of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852–2002 It was my desire in this work as much as possible to avoid resting the question of slavery on the coarser bodily horrors which have constituted the staple of anti-slavery books before now. […] Hence you will observe that there is not one scene of bodily torture described in the book—they are purposely omitted. My object was to make more prominent those thousand worse tortures which slavery inflicts on the soul […] It was therefore directly in opposition to the spirit of my intention to have a whipping scene on the very cover, and were I at liberty to authorize the work the plates of this kind would be to my mind an objection.58

On the other hand, when Billings and the engravers were at work in the fall of 1852 on the illustrations for the new edition, Stowe was busy compiling documents for A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and may have lacked time to discuss the illustrations with Billings and Jewett. The illustrated edition not only targeted an audience that could of course afford it, but one that could also appreciate beautifully manufactured books, and for which a book was also a luxury product, meant to be presented as a gift, leafed through and admired. Sampson Low’s advertisement in The Publishers’ Circular left no doubt as to the proper place for the work, described as “this splendid Drawing-room book.” Across the Atlantic, The Liberator assigned the same spot to the volume, which fully deserved “a place on the centre table of every household able to purchase a copy of it,” while The Independent touted it as “the book of the season for the parlor table.” Commentators on both sides of the Atlantic noted and commented upon the illustrations, and both illustrator and engravers were acknowledged; for the Athenaeum, for instance, the designs were “full of fancy,” “admirably drawn by Mr. Billings—and excellently rendered in engraving by Messrs. Baker, Smith, and Andrew.” The portraits of Stowe and Eva were often singled out for praise, and the addition of engravings in the Slave States of America. With Forty Illustrations. (London, C.H. Clarke and Co., 1852). For a discussion of such scenes in British illustrations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and whether Stowe inscribed them in the novel, see Paul Gutjahr, “Pictures of Slavery,” pp. 81–3, and Marcus Wood, Blind Memory, pp. 183–6. According to Leslie Fiedler, Stowe’s refusal to describe scenes of whipping in the text of the novel (“Scenes of blood and cruelty are shocking to our ear and heart. What man has nerve to do, man has not nerve to hear,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, p. 583), is all the more effective because it satisfies the reader’s need for “sadomasochistic titillation”: Leslie Fiedler, The Inadvertent Epic: From Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Roots (New York, Simon and Schuster, A Touchstone Book, 1980), pp. 36–7. 58 Letter dated 27 September (1852), quoted in H. Montgomery Hyde, Mr. and Mrs. Beeton (London, George Harrap, 1951), pp. 42–3. Stowe was quite right to note the very graphic representations of torture common to anti-slavery works, but the edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin she was referring to contained rather bland illustrations. On the other hand, one British edition (issued by the same firm) of Richard Hildreth’s The Slave: or, Memoirs of Archy Moore, published in the wake of the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and retitled The White Slave, had engravings of a rare violence, with highly evocative captions: “The horrible—being destroyed by mangling,” “The inhuman—being chopped up,” “The diabolical—being burned” (London, Clarke, Beeton and Co., 1853?) Clarke, Beeton and Co. succeeded Clarke and Co. and C.H. Clarke and Co. in 1853.


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met with general approval. For The Liberator, “[illustrations] stare the reader in the face with all the vividness of reality; and what the text only conveys to the mind, the artist has portrayed to the sight.”59 Commentators also commended the diversity and magnificence of the bindings, the quality of paper and the printing. The Liberator concluded that it would be an excellent gift book, while Norton advised readers who did not own a copy or who had “an early copy” to purchase the illustrated edition, as it was “by far the best and most attractive form in which to preserve the work for future use.”60 This was also the advice given by The Independent, in order to “replace the copy which has been passed from one reader to another, and by loan from house to house till it has been pretty fairly used up.”61 Coda: Editions and their Readers What do we know about the use readers made of the various editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin? That so few copies remain of the paper-covered two-volume edition may indicate that it was indeed passed from hand to hand until it fell apart.62 The full-gilt two-volume set, however, was used for presentation purposes, before the illustrated one-volume edition appeared in December 1852. As to the pamphlet edition, it seems to have been frequently re-bound with Key, the first edition of which Jewett issued in the same format, with paper covers as well. The owner would thus possess in a single volume both the novel and its authenticating documents. Some copies of the 37 cent-edition bore the name of their owners, who sometimes pasted newspaper cuttings on subjects related to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Thus, one re-bound copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key carries two articles from New York papers, dated 1900 and 1901 respectively; they both focus on real-life models for Uncle Tom, and their addition to the book suggests that the early 1850s editions were still in use half a century

59 The Publishers’ Circular, 1 November 1852; “Splendid Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Liberator, 17 December 1852, UVa web; “Books for the Season,” The Independent, 23 December 1852, UVa web; the Athenaeum is quoted by Sampson Low in an advertisement in The Publishers’ Circular of 1 November 1853; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Liberator, 21 January 1853, UVa web. 60 “Splendid Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Liberator, 17 December 1853, UVa web; Norton’s Literary Gazette and Publishers’ Circular, 1 June 1854: 275. 61 “Books for the Season,” The Independent, 23 December 1852, UVa web. Contemporary reviewers commonly computed between eight and 10 readers to a copy (see “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” National Anti-Slavery Standard, 17 June 1852). 62 Or perhaps it was less successful than the cloth-covered edition, since it lacked its permanence and was at the same time too costly for the labouring classes. In other words, it served no particular public. This idea is supported by the fact that: 1) the mention of this particular edition is often omitted in Jewett’s advertisements; and 2) quite a few copies of the pamphlet one-volume edition, also bound in paper wrappers, have survived.

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later.63 The choice of works to be bound with the paper-covered edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was sometimes surprising. For instance, a copy of the cheap edition, bearing the mention “One Hundred and Ninety-Third Thousand,” was bound by the owner with five other works, The Black Avenger of the Spanish Main (no author mentioned); The Lady of the Green and Blue; or, The Tragic Figure Head (by Charley Carey, US Navy); The Adventurer: or, The Wreck on the Indian Ocean. A Land and Sea Tale (by Lieutenant Murray); The Armorer of Tyre: or, The Oracle and Its Priest. An Eastern Tale (by Sylvanus Cobb, Jr); Eustatia: or, The Sybil’s Prophecy. A Tale of England, France and Spain (by Miss Sarah M. Howe). Most of these late 1840s and early 1850s stories were published by F. Gleason of Boston. Like Uncle Tom’s Cabin, they were printed in small type in two columns. The spine of the bound volume revealed the owner’s name as well as the use to be made of the six works brought together: “Stories for Winter, Vol. 5, Samuel A. Lowe.” Binding Uncle Tom’s Cabin and tales which properly belonged to story papers (Frederick Gleason published The Flag of Our Union and the bound volume retains a few advertisements for his paper) might indicate Uncle Tom’s Cabin was read for its entertainment value, rather than its commentary on the evils of slavery. At the same time, Gleason’s advertisements for The Flag (“A paper for the Million”) echoed Jewett’s name for the cheap paper edition (“An Edition for the Million”), suggesting that perhaps the similarity in claims and presentation led Lowe to bring together the six stories.64 Format may naturally have played a part in the decision as well. Whatever the reason, binding together such disparate reading material indicates a desire on the part of the owner to provide permanence to these works, whose paper covers gave them a transience somewhat similar to that of the periodical press. The one-volume illustrated edition, on the other hand, often served as a gift, as evidenced by the many presentation copies held at the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford. Some copies belonged to members of Stowe’s family. Her sister Mary Beecher Perkins dedicated a copy to her grandson Thomas C. Perkins in 1881; she herself had received the volume from Stowe, as an undated dedication indicates. Another copy is inscribed, “Louise, from Uncle Alex. November 23 1858”; another bears the note, handwritten by its owner, “The highly prized property of Louis Matty Simpson, 128 Grove Avenue, Prescott, Arizona, 1926.” This was over 70 years after the edition was published, and clearly this particular volume had been handed down

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This copy, bearing the statement “Two-Hundred and Eighty-Fifth Thousand,” is housed at the HBSC. 64 The copy is kept at the American Antiquarian Society. On Frederick Gleason, see note 9 in this chapter. A cheap edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America, London, Piper Brothers, 1852), kept in the British Library, was bound by its owner together with three other unrelated works, namely a history of gastronomy, a poem in four parts on the game of chess, and another long poem. The spine of the bound volume bears the following mention: “Miscellaneous 1 Art of Dining—Uncle Tom—Chess—La Fleur.”


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from someone who had much earlier been given the work.65 Many of these copies were indeed treasured. Their owners often pasted articles relating to Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the back of the front covers and in the fly-leaves. The dates of these articles range from the late 1880s to the 1930s; they tackle topics as varied as Stowe’s 76th birthday (though the article was dated 1888, Stowe actually turned 77 that year), the end of Tom-shows (1930), the fate of the handful of Uncle Toms who went to Liberia in 1821 (undated), the real life models for the characters of the novel (1929) ….66 Owners of these volumes evidently regarded them as objects worthy of special care, and attempted to amplify the resonance of the book by adding articles on related subjects.

65 All these copies are held at the HBSC. Yet another copy in the HBSC bears the following mentions: “J.B. (Lowing?) Brooklyn, NY” “J.B. L. to G. Herbert Swan Jr.” The illustrated edition therefore seems to have been regarded as a valuable legacy to be handed down to family members or friends. 66 This is only anecdotal evidence of the way readers handled their copies of the work. Thousands of such examples would be required to draw any definite conclusion on the subject. In contrast, the copy mentioned in the preceding note (presented to Herbert Swan Jr as a gift), includes a poem printed in a newspaper, and whose subject has nothing to do with slavery and Uncle Tom’s Cabin. All copies mentioned above are held at the HBSC.


Chapter 5

Distribution and Sales, 1852–1863 Reader, buy Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Go after it, send for it by mail, send some way, any way, only get it. By all means do not go out of this world without having read “the Story of the Age.” —Morning Star, Dover (1852)

Distribution Over 300,000 buyers heeded this piece of advice in the months that followed the initial publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Advertisements and newspaper notices hint at the different ways readers obtained copies of the work. Uncle Tom’s Cabin could be purchased in bookstores (at “the principal booksellers in the country,” according to Jewett’s advertisements). A Bostonian could go to the source of the novel, as it were, since Jewett, like many of his counterparts in various cities, owned a bookstore. Both the Boston and the Cleveland firm solicited orders from the trade, that is, the booksellers, and the Boston firm shipped the books by express. Norton noted in June 1852—and the information was credited to Jewett—that the hundred thousand volumes, representing 55 tons of books, were “principally transported in small boxes or packages by Messrs. Kingsley & Co.’s and Thompson & Co.’s Expresses.” In an article relaying the same information, The Independent took the opportunity to express enthusiasm about recent improvements in transportation, which allowed “so large a number of packages” to be transported “in so short a time.” The Boston firm of Quoted in Jewett’s advertisement, Norton’s, June 1852: 120 (Figure 1). Jewett’s bookstore was located at 17–19 Cornhill from 1850 to 1854, at which time he moved into a large bookstore on Washington Street. For the different locations of Jewett’s respective firms, see Winship, “John Punchard Jewett,” p. 90. Most publishing and bookselling firms were located on Washington Street and adjoining Cornhill (see Raymond L. Kilgour, Lee and Shepard, pp. 3–22, for a description of literary Boston in the 1840s and 1850s). Norton, June 1852: 108; “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Independent, 13 May 1852, UVa web. For improvements in transportation, especially the development of railroads, and their influence on book distribution, see vol. 3 of A History of the Book in America, forthcoming; see also W.S. Tryon, “Book Distribution in Mid-Nineteenth Century America, “ Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America (vol. 41, 1947): 210–30, and Zboray, A Fictive People, Chapter 4. Many researchers note that distribution remained a problem in the United States well into the twentieth century, prompting the creation of the Book of The Month Club in 1926; yet the fact so many copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin found a purchaser in 1852 does indicate that by the mid-nineteenth century, great quantities of books could indeed be efficaciously distributed:

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Ticknor and Fields also used these two firms, among others; Kingsley and Co. delivered books to New York and Philadelphia, while Thompson and Co. handled shipments for Western Massachusetts, Connecticut, but also upstate New York and the Midwest. The Cleveland firm of Jewett, Proctor and Worthington handled all sales “west of the Alleghenies”; this doubtless made it easier for Jewett to reach customers in the West. Yet there is evidence that in California demand far exceeded supply. Because there were not enough copies, as The Independent reported in August 1852, miners in San Francisco took turns reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and paid 25 cents each for that privilege, a steep price since it represented a full quarter of the retail price of the two-volume paper-covered edition. This information may have led to a November 1852 report in Norton that “a pamphlet edition” had appeared in California, where it was selling “at a very high price.” The author of the article, whose information came from a private source, doubted the existence of this edition, but reported the story for what it was worth. From California, steamers brought copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin further west, all the way to Honolulu, in what was then called the Sandwich Islands. There too copies were scarce and, according to one account, twenty-five names were on the waiting list to read the single copy available, until a steamer arrived from California with a fresh supply. Trade sales were another means of distribution for books. A “peculiarity of the book business in the United States,” these semi-annual or annual auctions were held see Michael Winship, “Publishing in America: Needs and Opportunities for Research,” pp. 61–102, in David D. Hall and John B. Hench (eds), Needs and Opportunities in the History of the Book. Michael Winship, American Literary Publishing, pp. 151–2. Winship notes that sending books by express was more expensive, but faster and safer than sending them by freight, since express companies “guaranteed swift delivery of a package to its destination.” However, when an order was particularly large, Ticknor and Fields usually sent it by freight rather than express. Whether true or not, Jewett’s claim to use the faster option participated in the creation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a phenomenon: not only did the work sell in unusual numbers, it also reached buyers more quickly, and this suggested the eagerness of American readers to receive it. Catalogue of the Forty-Second Philadelphia Trade Sale, Thomas and Sons, Auctioneers (February 1854), invoice of John P. Jewett and Co., Boston, p. 261 (AAS). “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Independent, 19 August 1852, UVa web. Things must have considerably improved by June of the following year, however: Bailey noted in the Era that the Christian Advocate, a San Francisco newspaper, offered a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to every new subscriber (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the South,” The National Era, 2 June 1853). For book distribution in California in the early 1850s, see Madeleine B. Stern, “Dissemination of Popular Books in the Midwest and Far West during the Nineteenth Century,” pp. 76–97, in Michael Hackenberg (ed.), Getting the Books Out. “‘Uncle Tom’ Literature,” Norton, November 1852: 212–13. I have found no other mention of such an edition; it would of course have been a pirated edition, and Jewett or Stowe would have acted swiftly to have it suppressed, as they tried to do for an unauthorized German translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: see Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors, Chapter 3. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The New York Times, 14 January 1853, UVa web.

Distribution and Sales, 1852–1863

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in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and Cincinnati, and brought together publishers and retailers. Their main function, according to Michael Winship, was “the transfer of books from publishers to jobbers and booksellers.”10 Trade sales allowed publishers to get rid of their stocks, both of slow-selling and popular, newer and older books.11 They also included other items, such as stereotype plates. During the sale, books were offered in lots of various sizes, and “the price was set by competitive bidding.”12 Trade sale catalogues indicate that Jewett sold Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the Philadelphia trade sale of February 1854, the New York trade sale of March 1854, and the supplemental trade sale in New York in November of the same year.13 Jewett’s advertisements mentioned that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was sold by “canvassing agents,” and a few days after the publication of the novel, Jewett had announced that he was looking for agents (“Agents wanted to sell this book”).14 These may have been agents employed to procure orders from bookstores or to sell the novel to individual customers in rural areas.15 Similarly, in 1853, Derby and Miller (Auburn, NY), announcing that 50,000 copies of Fern Leaves had already found a purchaser, sought “active Book Agents,” and assured potential agents that they would find it easy to dispose of a thousand copies of the work in each county that winter, “among the farmers and small villages.”16 Uncle Tom’s Cabin also circulated through the mail, as Jewett’s advertisements indicate. Customers were charged 26 cents for postage on the paper-covered edition and 34 cents for the cloth-bound version. A copy would be forwarded to them on “Extracts from New Books, Bookselling. From Appleton’s ‘New American Cyclopedia,’” American Publishers’ Circular and Literary Gazette, 14 August 1858: 390–92. 10 Michael Winship, “Getting the Books Out: Trade Sales, Parcel Sales, and Book Fairs in the Nineteenth-Century United States,” pp. 4–25 in Michael Hackenberg (ed.), Getting the Books Out. 11 The mere presence of a title in a catalog does not mean that the publisher was especially desirous to dispose of it. Some invoices are so long and include so many titles that they sometimes seem to reflect the complete catalogue of the publisher. 12 Winship, “Getting the Books Out,” p. 6. 13 Catalogue of the Forty-Second Philadelphia Trade Sale, Thomas and Sons, Auctioneers (Begins 28 February 1854), AAS; Catalogue of the Fifty-Ninth New York Trade Sale (Starts March 13, 1854), and “Supplemental Trade Sale,” November 1854, Rare Books, New York Public Library. The catalogues are listed and their location is given in George L. McKay, American Book Auction Catalogues 1713–1934. A Union List (New York, New York Public Library, 1937). 14 Ad for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, printed on the third page of The National Era, 25 March 1852. 15 Before railroads, canals, and other means of transportation made distribution faster and easier, publishers hired agents to peddle books among the population. The most famous example is that of Mason Locke Weems, who worked for Philadelphia publisher Matthew Carey in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. See Zboray, A Fictive People, Chapter 3. 16 Undated advertisement, Fanny Fern and Ethel Parton Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, MA.

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receipt of the proper amount; orders from “west of the Alleghany mountains should be directed to the Western publishers.”17 G.W. Light (the Boston agent for the Era and other publications) engaged to send copies by mail under 500 miles “free of postage” on receipt of $1.25, and assured readers that “fractional parts of a dollar can be sent in post office stamps.” William Harned, “Publishing Agent” in New York, offered the same service for a dollar bill and 27 cents in stamps below 500 miles, and 54 cents if further.18 The same prices applied to a paper-covered copy of the novel ordered directly from the Era’s office in Washington.19 Because of the specific anti-slavery contents of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, copies were deposited at the office of the Era in Washington, which sold the two-volume edition in the three different bindings. William Harned, who stocked anti-slavery publications, announced that the work could be obtained from the Depository of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in New York.20 The Society was also instrumental in circulating the work outside New York. Indeed, in 1853, the Thirteenth Annual Report of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society noted that, “Large numbers of books and pamphlets have been sold to colporteurs and others.” The report then pointed at its own success in “promoting the good of the cause”: thanks to its agency, “Upwards of ten thousand dollars’ worth of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ have been sold during the year.”21 In addition to bookstores, agents, and the post office, therefore, specific means of distribution opened for Uncle Tom’s Cabin by virtue of the very nature of the work, which is to say, as a weapon in the fight against slavery. This, incidentally, also helps explain its sales figures. Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the South How extensively was Uncle Tom’s Cabin circulated in the South? On this point, only indirect evidence is available. As discussed in Chapter 1, Stowe intended to attack 17 Ad

for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, printed on the third page of The National Era, 25 March

1852. 18 The National Era, 25 March 1852, for the advertisement by G.W. Light, which was to be repeated over the next few months, and was still to be found, in, for instance, the number dated 19 August 1852; Harned started advertising Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Era in April 1852, and also ran advertisements regularly, adapting them at least once to include sales figures. From the various advertisements, it seems evident that the paper-covered edition was the one to be circulated by the post-office. 19 Summarizing the various means by which books were circulated in the 1850s, an advertisement for Female Life among the Mormons (Maria Ward, published in New York, by J.C. Derby, in 1855), in “Putnam’s Monthly Advertiser” for December 1855 (p. xii), listed the ways the publication could be obtained: booksellers, agents (and thousands of agents were wanted “to circulate this Book to every town in the United States”), and mail. 20 See Chapter 3, note 4. 21 “Thirteenth Annual Report, American Foreign and Anti-Slavery Society,” The National Era, 11 May 1853, UVa web.


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slavery without alienating slaveholders themselves. There were two reasons for this. First, she believed that antagonizing planters would defeat the purpose by making Southerners even more adamant in their defence of slavery. Second, Stowe was well aware of the existence of what she herself called a “cordon sanitaire” to keep all publications smacking of anti-slavery sentiments out of the South. As she explained to British essayist and historian Sir Arthur Helps in August 1852, she did “every justice” to planters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, even exaggerating a little “on the side of mercy.” Her strategy worked for a time since, as she told her correspondent, the bars protecting the South were down, and an anti-slavery novel was “actually pouring full tide into the southern states.”22 In September 1852, The New York Times noted, “Here it has been read by everybody in every section,” and assured its readers that, “[i]t is bought and read almost as freely at the South as at the North.”23 In October 1852, John R. Thompson justified a lengthy, and scathing, review of the novel in the Southern Literary Messenger on the grounds that “this slanderous work has found its way to every section of our country.”24 According to Stowe biographer Forrest Wilson, it took until June 1852 for both North and South to realize the powerful effect of the novel; the immediate consequence in the South was “the spontaneous suppression of the book.”25 Some Northern commentators had from the first felt that readership of Uncle Tom’s Cabin properly belonged to the free States. For Frederick Douglass’ Paper, for instance, the novel was “destined to occupy a niche in every American Library, north of ‘Mason and Dixon’s Line.’”26 By the summer of 1852, the South had evidently begun to take action against Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In a speech delivered in the House of Representatives in August 1852, Horace Mann lambasted the attempt by Southerners attending the Democratic Convention in Baltimore to put an end to all further discussion of slavery. As a result, he observed, “that divine-hearted woman, the authoress of ‘Uncle Tom’s

22 HBS

to Sir Arthur Helps, 22 August 1852, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. “Uncle Tom in England,” The New York Times, 18 September 1852, UVa web. In May 1852, The New York Times reported on a meeting of the Universalist Moral Reform Society in Boston on 27 May. A Reverend Gaylord was quoted as rejoicing to find that Uncle Tom’s Cabin “was extensively read, especially at the South” (“Universalist Moral Reform Society,” The New York Times, 28 May 1852, UVa web). 24 “Notices of New Works,” Southern Literary Messenger (Richmond), October 1852, UVa web. The review is reprinted in the Norton Critical Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Elizabeth Ammons [ed.], New York, W.W. Norton, 1994), pp. 467–77, where it is mistakenly attributed to George F. Holmes. The UVa web attributes it to Thompson, the editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a point confirmed by Gossett, who explains that Holmes was indeed asked to review the work, but that his review arrived too late to be included in the October number; as a result, Thompson wrote a review himself. Holmes’s review appeared in the December number (Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, p. 189). 25 Wilson, Crusader, p. 297. 26 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 1 April 1852, UVa web. The paper reiterated this point on 3 June 1852. 23

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Cabin,’ is under the Baltimore ban.”27 In early January 1853, in a letter to the Earl of Carlisle, Stowe provided the following account of the novel in the South: “They have interdicted my book in most of the Southern book stores.” She regarded this as due to the influence of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on readers: “Three cases have come to my knowledge where it caused the immediate emancipation of slaves—This is the reason why it is forbidden—why there is no end to the bitter abuse of it.”28 Some reports of slaves having been encouraged to run away upon reading or hearing Uncle Tom’s Cabin doubtless gave Southerners another reason for wishing to stop its circulation. In June 1853, various papers printed the story of a Kentucky slave who had obtained a copy of Stowe’s novel and read it to his fellow slaves; as a consequence, a group of 25 escaped to Ohio, where the Underground Railroad helped them get to Canada.29 According to the black-managed Provincial Freeman (Toronto, Ontario), Uncle Tom’s Cabin greatly increased the “business” of the Underground Railroad, since most of the slaves who read it or had the novel read to them immediately decided to strike out for Canada.30 Attempts to suppress the circulation of the work took various forms: copies of the work were burned publicly in Athens, Georgia in the months that followed its first publication; a bookseller from Mobile, Alabama, was run out of town in 1856 for selling three anti-slavery books, including Uncle Tom’s Cabin; in Maryland, in 1857, a free black was sentenced to 10 years in jail for having in his possession anti-slavery documents, one of which was Uncle Tom’s Cabin.31 Still, there is no doubt that the novel circulated in spite of that unofficial ban. The New York Times correspondent, visiting the South, noted that the book was not placarded outside bookstores, but that, judging from frequent allusions to it, the novel was “a good deal read.”32 Frederick Law Olmsted, travelling in the South in the early 1850s, was aboard a steamboat on the Red River, when he observed that, “Among the peddlers there were two of ‘cheap literature,’ and among their yellow covers, each had two or three copies of the cheap edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’ They did not cry it out as they did the other books they had, but held it forth among others, so its title could be seen.” One of the peddlers told Olmsted that he carried the work because “gentlemen often enquired for it, and he sold 27 Horace Mann, “Speech of Hon. Horace Mann, of Massachusetts, on the Institution of Slavery. Delivered in the House of Representatives, August 17, 1852.” Washington: printed at the Congressional Globe Office, 1852. 28 HBS to Lord Morpeth (George Howard, 7th Earl of Carlisle), 7 January 1853, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318 etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. 29 “The ‘Senior Editor’ against Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” The Independent, 16 June 1853, UVa web. According to many Southerners, the example of George encouraged fugitive slaves to resort to violence. 30 William Still, letter to the editor, The Provincial Freeman (Toronto), 6 May 1854, UVa web. The weekly was harshly critical of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, especially of its colonizationist stance. 31 See Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, p. 211. 32 “The South. Letters on the Productions, Industry and Resources of the Slave States. Number 4,” The New York Times, 4 March 1853, UVa web.


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a good many.” On the same trip, a slave-owning passenger who claimed he treated his slaves well, remarked that he wished he had bought the novel in New Orleans, where he supposed he “might” have got it.33 “Might” is the key word here, as it seems that Southerners wishing to get hold of a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin often had to send North for it. Thus, a New Orleans reader, who told The Independent that Stowe’s novel had made its way to his city, where it was avidly read, noted, “I sent to New York for the book”; his copy then began a round of loans among various acquaintances.34 Copies were sometimes brought back from a trip North. Another New Orleans reader got a copy from “a young student, who purchased it at the North, to read on his homeward passage to New Orleans.”35 In his diary, Charles William Holbrook, a Northerner hired to tutor the children of a North Carolina planter, mentioned that a Mr Glen had just arrived from New York with Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Aunt Phyllis’s Cabin, one of the fictional answers to Stowe’s novel.36 A few private letters also hint that Southerners found various means to obtain copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Harriet Mathews, of Virginia, considered the post office but was reluctant to pay for postage, and concluded that she would be on the lookout for a better way to send Stowe’s novel, together with another work.37 Mary C. Moore, from Louisiana, wrote to her husband to remind him to get the novel for her, as she had seen “so much of it in the papers.” She was evidently bored, had read everything that was in the house, wished there were a good library close by; the weather was bad and, she told him, “time hangs heavy on my hands.”38 Even though the work and its author were frowned upon, to say the least, in the South, many Southerners wanted to read it. Some, like Mary C. Moore, just wanted to pass time. Others were doubtless curious to know what the fuss was all about. The novel had been extensively reviewed in the South, not always unfavorably, although

33 Frederick Law Olmsted, The Cotton Kingdom: A Travellers’ Observations on Cotton and Slavery in the American Slave States, ed. Arthur M. Schlesinger (New York, Knopf, 1953; it was first published in 1861, as an abridged version by Olmsted of his own 1856 A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States), pp. 269–76. 34 “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” (reprinted from The Independent), The Liberator, 8 October 1852, UVa web. The letter is dated 18 August 1852. 35 Letter dated 19 June 1852, reprinted in Key (1853; Bedford, MA, Applewood, 1998), pp. 60–61. Stowe used a number of letters from readers in Key, addressed to her, or written to newspaper editors. 36 This entry is dated 1 October (1852). From frequent references to “Mr. Glen” (sometimes spelled “Glenn”) it seems he was either a relative or neighbor of the planter (D.D. Hall, “A Yankee Tutor in the Old South,” pp. 82–91). 37 Harriet Mathews to “Dear Wm,” 13 February 1856, Papers of the Mathews Family, MSS 5240, Special Collections, UVa. 38 Mary C. Moore to “My dear husband,” New Iberia, 28 January 1853. David Weeks and Family Papers, Mss. 528, Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana (Records of Ante Bellum Southern Plantations from the Revolution through the Civil War, Series I, Part 6, reel 10).

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a number of Southern papers eventually called for complete silence on the subject.39 Other Southerners naturally enough wanted to see how they had been (mis)represented by a Northern writer.40 That some Southern readers sympathetic to the anti-slavery cause wished to read the work is evidenced by an article that noted, “We know personally of copies that have found their way to the extreme South, and have heard of single copies being kept in active though secret circulation in a circle of friends, all of whom awaited their turn impatiently ….”41 The Mobile bookseller who was run out of town defended himself by saying, “So many of our planters and other customers begged me to procure for them a copy of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ that […] I ordered fifty copies of it ….”42 In his account of a journey in the Southern States, C.G. Parsons, related—unfortunately without any details respecting what prompted the occasion—an intriguing example of a communal reading of the last chapters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. At what was evidently the last evening in a series of similar meetings, about 60 white men gathered in a stable for the reading. Parsons left at one in the morning, before the reading was over (he already knew the ending and felt sleepy), but he noted frequent interruptions by listeners, who wanted to discuss the characters. Parsons did not say whether this reading was done covertly, however.43 The desire to read the work may account for the surprising statement by Jewett in the spring of 1853, namely that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was then selling largely in the South. Jewett informed the papers that he had received orders from Vicksburg, Mississippi, from Georgia, and from New Orleans. Was this an attempt to boost declining sales and encourage Southerners to procure the work by convincing them that many among them were already reading it? His claim to have received orders from California, Oregon and such distant parts of the world as Australia and Persia certainly sounds more plausible.44

39 Similarly, it was sometimes reviewed very harshly in the Northern press. As a bewildered

Calvin wrote to Stowe, “Uncle Tom gets the vilest vituperation from some of the northern papers and the highest eulogies from some of the Southern” (CES to HBS, 17 June 1853, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC). For a full account of the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see Thomas F. Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture. 40 See “A Mistake in Literary History,” The National Era, 21 June 1855. 41 “‘Uncle Tom’ at the South,” The National Anti-Slavery Standard, 4 November 1852, UVa web. 42 “Another Letter from the Banished Mobile Bookseller” (reprinted from the New York Journal of Commerce), The New York Times, 5 January 1857, UVa web. 43 C.G. Parsons, Inside View of Slavery; or a Tour among the Planters (Boston, John P. Jewett, 1855). Stowe wrote an introduction to this anti-slavery account of a journey through the slave states in 1852–1853. 44 The information is reported in Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 11 March 1853 (“Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) and 22 April 1853 (“A Year’s Work”), respectively, UVa web. Both articles were reprinted from other papers.


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Sales Figures Computing the sales of Jewett’s editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is little more than guesswork, since the available evidence (publisher’s advertisements, sales figures on the various volumes of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the contemporary press) is, by its very nature, suspicious. In 1883, in the Manhattan interview, Jewett claimed that, “More than 320,000 sets of two volumes each were published in the first year. After that, the demand fell off.”45 In the 1850s, the press gave diverse figures, some of which were provided by the publisher. Charles Briggs, commenting in January 1853 on the “miracle,” gave the following figures with an authority that suggests he derived his information from Jewett: “one hundred and twenty thousand sets of the edition in two volumes, fifty thousand copies of the cheaper edition in one, and three thousand copies of the illustrated edition.”46 In March 1853, the American public was informed that the work had sold 305,000 copies on the anniversary date of its publication.47 Although, in January 1854, Putnam’s Monthly assessed at 295,000 the number of copies sold, the figure most often quoted in the press was 310,000, a figure frequently taken from the same source, namely the Boston Traveller.48 The trade journal Norton gave the figure of 310,000 in June 1854; its successor, The American Publishers’ Circular, assessed sales at 305,000 in February 1856, and, in August 1858, provided the figure of 310,000.49 If we now look at the “thousandth” statements on the volumes themselves (see Appendix 2), it appears that Jewett included all the different editions and their reprints in his calculations. The publisher issued 120,000 sets of the two-volume edition, ordering reprints of either 5,000 or 10,000, then leaped to the figure of 153,000 for the first printing of the cheap edition. This suggests that he ordered an enormous first printing of 30,000 copies of the inexpensive edition, and that he included in his “thousandth” statement the first printing (3,000) of the illustrated edition, which came out at roughly the same time as the cheap edition.50 Jewett then ordered printings of 10,000 or 20,000 copies of the cheap edition, before the size of the printings became more irregular; the “thousandth” statements reveal printings that, towards the end, 45

The Manhattan: 30. “Uncle Tomitudes,” Putnam’s Monthly, January 1853: 98. 47 “A Year’s Work,” (reprinted from the Congregationalist), Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 22 April 1853, UVa web. 48 “Literary Piracy,” Putnam’s Monthly, January 1854: 96–103; “Literary Items,” The New York Times, 20 December 1854, UVa web. 49 “Correspondence,” Norton, 1 June 1854: 275; American Publishers’ Circular and Literary Gazette, 16 February 1856 (“One Letter from Boston”: 93–6), and 14 August 1858 (“Extracts from New Books, Bookselling. From Appleton’s ‘New American Cyclopedia’”: 390–92); for other works, the following figures are provided: The Lamplighter: 90,000; Shady Side: 42,000; Fern Leaves: 70,000; Ruth Hall: 55,000; Longfellow’s Hiawatha: 43,000; Life of Barnum: 45,000. 50 The possibility exists, however, that copies bearing different “thousandth” statements may have gone unrecorded. 46

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became as small as 1,000. Jewett ordered two small reprints of the two-volume edition: a 2,000 copy reprint (“263,000”), and an ultimate reprint bearing the figure of “308,000.” The next “thousandth” slug was to appear in a reprint dated 1863, published by Ticknor and Fields, with the notation “311,000.” Jewett ordered only one reprint of 2,000 copies of the one-volume illustrated edition, and the figure was most likely included in one of the irregular “thousandth” statements.51 If we are to believe the “thousandth” statements, the examination of the copies, the accounts in the press, and Jewett’s advertisements all suggest the following scenario: Jewett brought out around 125,000 copies of the two-volume edition, around 180,000 copies of the cheap edition, and 5,000 copies of the one-volume illustrated edition.52 That he published them does not mean, however, that he sold them, although contemporary papers reveal the difference was rarely made between the producing of volumes and their finding a purchaser.53 A Surprising Hiatus None of the copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin published by Jewett bears a date later than 1853. There is then a nine-year hiatus before the next edition, issued by Ticknor and Fields, who by then had become Stowe’s publishers. How can this be accounted for? In March 1853, Jewett claimed that demand was unabated.54 Yet the decreasing size of printings clearly points to a decline in sales, which supports Jewett’s statement in The Manhattan that demand declined after the first year. In June 1854, Norton noted that the work was still selling, even if the call for it was “of course not great at present.” Yet as early as February 1853, Harper’s Monthly had given “the average rate of current literary stocks,” and noted with no little irony that, “The greatest fluctuation we have to note is in Uncle Tom’s Cabin—opening at 170 and closing at 150, with a downward tendency.”55 A few months later, in the fall of 1853, the New 51 See The Literary World, 12 February 1853: Jewett’s whole-page advertisement for Key included the announcement of this forthcoming second issue, which brought to 5,000 the total number of copies of the illustrated edition. 52 In March 1853, Frederick Douglass’ Paper reported Jewett as saying that he had issued over 250,000 copies of the work in eight months, and that 120,000 copies of the pamphlet edition had been printed. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 11 March 1853, UVa web. The same paper asserted on 22 April that 305,000 copies had been sold. 53 Norton, the trade journal, however, represented a significant albeit logical exception, when it stated in November 1854 that “Jewett & Co., of Boston, have printed and sold 310,000 copies of ‘Uncle Tom …’” (“Literary Intelligence,” Norton, 1 November 1854: 554–5). 54 Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 22 April 1853, UVa web. 55 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly, February 1853: 419. In 1853, this column was shared by George William Curtis and Donald G. Mitchell (better known under the pseudonym Ik Marvel). See Eugene Exman, The Brothers Harper, p. 317. Harper’s Monthly had been remarkably silent on the subject of Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the magazine did not mention the novel


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York Herald delivered a final verdict on the topic: “Uncle Tom […] has ceased to be a standard work. At the last trade sales he was at an unsaleable discount. The demand for Uncle Tom is filled.”56 Uncle Tom’s Cabin indeed made a poor show at the Philadephia trade sale of February 1854. The two-volume edition priced at $1.50 sold for 42 cents only. This amounted to 28 per cent of the listed price, compared to an average winning bid of 44.5 per cent for the other works of American fiction offered at the sale. This suggests that the work was no longer in demand, and that Jewett had totally saturated the market for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.57 Such saturation is also suggested by the size of the lots the work was offered in, as well as their origin. Strangely enough, the copies of the two-volume edition mentioned above, which sold in lots of 20, were offered by Phillips, Sampson, Stowe’s new publishers—they brought out her Sunny Memories in the summer of 1854. At the same Philadelphia trade sale, Stowe’s former publisher, John P. Jewett, was also proposing copies of the two-volume edition, in lots of 25, as well as smaller lots of the one-volume illustrated edition (five of each binding) and much larger lots of the onevolume cheap edition (100). A month later, at the New York trade sale, Phillips, Sampson offered lots of 50 copies of the two-volume edition, together with lots of 30 copies of an answer to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Uncle Tom’s Cabin as It Is (W.L.G. Smith, Buffalo, Geo. H. Derby, 1852). Jewett offered the different editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in lots similar to those offered in Philadelphia, save for the cheap onevolume edition, which was sold in lots of 50. Phillips, Sampson did not include Uncle Tom’s Cabin in their invoice for the supplemental trade sale in November. Jewett, however, was still proposing various editions of the work.58 At the Cincinnati trade sale of September 1854, Phillips, Sampson proposed Uncle Tom’s Cabin in lots of 50; Jewett, Proctor and Worthington, on the other hand, did not include Uncle Tom’s Cabin in their invoice.59 Since both Jewett’s and Phillips, Sampson’s archives have disappeared, the details of the arrangement cannot be related with certainty. It is obvious, however, before this number of February 1853. In the “Editor’s Easy Chair,” the ironical statement on the fluctuation of the novel was followed (p. 420) by a letter from a “Friend in the South.” The reader, a slaveholder, objected to the description of slavery provided in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and explained the deep attachment that existed between masters and slaves. The letter, in a measured tone, was meant as a good-natured answer to Stowe’s novel. Harper’s Monthly was read North and South, and tried hard to avoid alienating any category of readers. 56 Article reprinted in the National Anti-Slavery Standard, 24 September 1853, UVa web. The Herald was extremely critical of the anti-slavery movement. 57 Zboray, A Fictive People, pp. 29–30. The catalogue of the Philadelphia trade sale (AAS) still retains pencil marks of bidders; these indicate the price at which the books actually sold. The same catalogue reveals, for instance, that Grace Greenwood’s Greenwood Leaves (Ticknor, Reed and Fields) sold for 75 cents, against a listed price of $2.50 58 See note 13 in this chapter. 59 First Catalogue of the Twenty-Seventh Cincinnati Trade Sale (Starts September 11, 1854), S.G. Hubbard, AAS.

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that Jewett sold copies of the two-volume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Phillips, Sampson who, in addition to their publishing firm, owned a retail bookstore and were also wholesalers.60 One of the aims of the trade sales was to get rid of stocks, and Phillips, Sampson had certainly overestimated the demand for Stowe’s novel. As a result, they offered the work at various trade sales in 1854; the fact that their invoice did not include the book in November may indicate that they had succeeded in selling the remaining copies. They had probably ordered fewer copies of Life at the South, since the title only appeared at one of the trade sales.61 As for Jewett, he had doubtless been over-optimistic in respect to the continued sales of the novel. He consequently found himself with sizeable stocks of the various editions, especially the inexpensive one, as the size of the lots indicates. The hypothesis that Jewett had so saturated the market that he was left with large stocks is confirmed by a letter from Calvin Stowe to his wife. On 11 July 1853, Calvin wrote to Stowe, who was still in Europe, that he had received Jewett’s account for the period ending on 1 July. Calvin listed various items, explaining that he was at a loss to understand the last one, “Books now on hand,” which amounted to almost $2,000. There is little doubt that this referred to the as yet unsold copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.62 Norton, which ascribed part of the success of the work to “fashion,” logically concluded that the decrease in demand for Stowe’s novel was an inevitable phenomenon.63 For Harper’s Monthly, the literary taste of Americans was “exceedingly spasmodic and whimsical,” which accounted for the “downward tendency” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.64 Quite possibly, Jewett’s targeting of all categories of the population had ensured that Uncle Tom’s Cabin would find its maximum audience. According to publisher André Schiffrin, 300,000 copies in 1852 would be equivalent to six million copies in the early twenty-first century.65 This staggering figure is even more impressive if one considers 1) that even if the novel had found its way to the South, the work circulated mainly in the North and 2) each copy of the work probably had from eight to 10 readers per copy.66 60

Winship, American Literary Publishing, p. 151: Phillips, Sampson, and John P. Jewett were among the largest wholesalers or jobbers in Boston in the mid-1850s. 61 The Independent announced in September 1852 that 15,000 copies of Life at the South; or, Uncle Tom’s Cabin as It Is were said to have sold, while almost a year later the work was reported as having “sunk into its grave.” “Uncle Tom Literature,” The Independent, 30 September 1852, UVa web; “Speech of Hon. Geo. W. Julian …,” Frederick Douglass’ Paper, 29 July 1853, UVa. 62 CES to HBS, 11 July 1853, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. The exact amount is $1895.20. Key was most likely not included in the “books now on hand.” It had been issued a few weeks earlier, and was selling briskly (see CES to HBS, 17 June 1853, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC). 63 Norton, 1 June 1854: 275. 64 “Editor’s Easy Chair,” Harper’s Monthly, February 1853: 419. 65 André Schiffrin, The Business of Books (London, Verso, 2001, 1st edn 2000), p. 8. 66 Such was the frequent contention of the contemporary press. To take just one example, according to The Literary World, which did not like the work, “if some books find more


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Another explanation for the decline in demand for Uncle Tom’s Cabin is that readers turned to Stowe’s new book, Key, when it was issued in the late spring of 1853, and to the many pro-and anti-slavery works which came out in the wake of the success of Stowe’s novel. Indeed, though Uncle Tom’s Cabin was certainly not the first antislavery work published, nor even the first anti-slavery novel, it released the floodgates for what Graham’s disparagingly called “Uncle-Tom foolery.” For Graham’s, Stowe was to blame: “The shelves of booksellers groan under the weight of Sambo’s woes, done up in covers!” Graham’s then concluded that it was all “business,” “a question of dollars and cents.” 67 In contrast, the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society rejoiced that the success of Uncle Tom’s Cabin inspired the publication of other antislavery works, and gave “to literature of this description unwonted popularity and success.” Between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and other anti-slavery publications, Jewett, for one, issued no fewer than 428,000 volumes of anti-slavery literature in 1852 and the first half of 1853.68 Both anti-slavery works and responses to Uncle Tom’s Cabin capitalized on the “miracle.” Many works, both fiction and nonfiction, produced between 1852 and 1861 bore titles which connected them directly to Stowe’s novel, including but not limited to Aunt Phyllis’s Cabin; or, Southern Life as It Is (Mary H. Eastman, Philadelphia, Lippincott, Grambo and Co., 1852), Uncle Robin in His Cabin in Virginia, and Tom without One in Boston (John W. Page, Richmond, J.W. Randolph, 1853), and Life at the South; or, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” as It Is: Being Narratives, Scenes, and Incidents in the Real “Life of the Lowly” (William L.G. Smith, Buffalo, George H. Derby and Co., 1852). Anti-slavery works were also frequently linked with Stowe’s work, and Derby and Miller, who had learned much from Jewett about advertising, as their campaign for Fern Leaves demonstrates, advertised Solomon Northup’s slave narrative, Twelve Years a Slave (1853) as “Another ‘Key’ to Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”69 While Uncle Tom’s

purchasers than readers […], Uncle Tom has probably ten readers to every purchaser” (“The Uncle Tom Epidemic,” The Literary World, 4 December 1852: 355). 67 George Graham, “Black Letters; or Uncle Tom-Foolery in Literature,” Graham’s (Philadelphia), February 1853, UVa web. 68 “Thirteenth Annual Report …,” The National Era, 11 May 1853, UVa web. The Independent also remarked that Stowe had “founded a new ‘school’ in literature,” and proceeded to list poems based on the novel as well as pro-slavery answers (“Uncle Tom Literature,” The Independent, 30 September 1852, UVa web). For a list and an analysis of the pro-slavery answers to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, Chapter 12, and Sarah Meer, Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s (Athens, The University of Georgia Press, 2005), Chapter 3. 69 Norton, August 1853: 137. Derby and Miller (Auburn) and Derby, Orton and Mulligan (Buffalo) advertised both Fern Leaves (“30,000 books sold in eight weeks”) and Twelve Years A Slave: The Narrative of Solomon Northup. Northup’s story had first been related in The New York Times. Stowe had herself used this account in A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, to authenticate her description of Legree’s Red River plantation in Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Northup was kidnapped and sold into slavery in that region): Key, pp. 173–4.

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Cabin did not inaugurate what can loosely be called “slavery literature,” it certainly revealed the full extent of its marketability. Stowe’s Gains For the contemporary press, Stowe’s gains were no less remarkable than the sales figures of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The news that Jewett had given Stowe a first check of $10,300 for the first three months of sale was leaked to the papers, perhaps thanks to Jewett himself. As further proof of the popularity of the work, this was yet another successful promotional tool. As The New York Times observed, “We believe that this is the largest sum of money ever received by any author, either American or European, from the actual sales of a single work in so short a period of time.”70 Stowe’s gains were estimated at $20,000 in early 1853.71 Isabella Beecher Hooker, Stowe’s half-sister, had told her husband in June 1852 that Jewett was about to pay Stowe $10,000 and that the writer stood to gain as much from ensuing sales of the novel.72 In The Manhattan, Jewett claimed to have given the Stowes at least two checks of $10,000 each.73 In January 1854, Norton’s assessed Stowe’s earnings from Uncle Tom’s Cabin at $30,000, a figure often quoted in the press both in the 1850s and in the following decades.74 Henry Paul Blatchford Jewett, defending his half-brother John P. Jewett, against attacks that he had unfairly treated Mrs. Stowe, contended that the writer had received “about $30,000” in 18 months.75 Stowe’s correspondence makes it impossible to know with any certainty the precise financial compensation she received for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Few of the writer’s account books have survived, and those that have belong to a later period. Even though 70 “News by the Mails,” The New York Times, 12 July 1852, UVa web. The paper reprinted the information from the Boston Traveller. 71 “Editor’s Table,” Graham’s, March 1853, UVa web. Joel Parker, as The National Era noted in October 1852, intended to sue Stowe for $20,000, the amount which he thought Uncle Tom’s Cabin would yield. 72 “She expects to realise as much more in time from this book & something more from other things yet unwritten.” Isabella Beecher Hooker to John Hooker, 25 June 1852, Isabella Beecher Hooker Collection, HBSC. 73 The Manhattan, January 1883: 30. 74 “Correspondence,” Norton, 1 June 1854: 275; The Washington Post, (“Personal,” 16 April 1878, UVa web) gave the amount of $40,000, but a year later (“Personal,” 3 September 1879, UVa web) adjusted the figure to $30,000. The New York Times (20 May 1878, UVa web) dismissed a story then spreading in the press, that Stowe received $300,000 from Jewett, an amount that the paper considered as unrealistic as $3,000,000. The New York Times insisted that “Mrs. Stowe has never got over $25,000 to $30,000, say those in a position to be informed.” 75 H.P.B. Jewett, “The Story of a Story—Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” letter to the Editors of the Cincinnati Chronicle, reprinted in The New York Times, 15 November 1868, UVa web. Hedrick calculates that Stowe received around $40,000 from Jewett for both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Key (Harriet Beecher Stowe, note 64, p. 445).


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Stowe kept a sharp eye on business questions, she seems to have been somewhat disorganized in keeping accounts, as Calvin’s frequent reproaches demonstrate. After several letters in which he berated her for being “much too sanguine and easy and careless” on expenses, or predicted that if she did not keep careful accounts, she would find herself “in the swamp” and the entire family “in wretchedness,” he issued the following warning: The fact is, when I shall see you keeping an accurate book account of your possessions, income and expenditures, fairly written out, as you are able to write (& I am not) with careful, judicious estimates of future needs & the means of supplying them, I shall have respect for your pecuniary calculations, & never till then.76

Calvin’s 11 July 1853 letter to his wife indicates that Jewett probably issued account statements every six months, in July and December.77 Given this, the statement Calvin discussed in his letter would have been the third since the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. It most likely included the sales of Uncle Tom, the first month of sales of Key and perhaps the sales of other works by Stowe, including a small booklet entitled Earthly Care, which Jewett published in 1853. For these, Jewett credited $9,172.27 to Stowe, though most of the amount had already been paid in advances and loans to Stowe or her family. James Beecher had received over $1,800 in cash, Catherine had obtained $1,500 for what Calvin indignantly called her “swindle,” various bills incurred by the family had been paid by Jewett (who, for instance, had settled a $363.50 bill for “dry goods”), and “books now on hand” amounted to $1,895.20.78 Jewett also deducted from the total amount the sum of $567.92 for copies of Uncle Tom and Key which Stowe had bought from him. This enormous sum suggests the writer distributed hundreds of copies.79 As we know, Stowe gave or sent presentation copies to various influential figures—in the hope they would help promote the book and the cause—as well as to relatives and friends. She sometimes used her works as

76 CES to HBS, 31 July 1853, 8 August 1853, 9 February 1857, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. 77 CES to HBS, 11 July 1853, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. In his Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Charles Edward Stowe mentioned semi-annual statements (p. 159). 78 This last item seems to indicate that Jewett made Stowe bear the financial cost of unsold copies (Jewett charged Charles Sumner around $20 for the remainder of a pamphlet edition of Sumner’s White Slavery, and Sumner asked Fields, who had issued a collection of his speeches in 1850, what he ought to do about it: Charles Sumner to James T. Fields, 8 December 1853, FI 4081, HL). Calvin was often irritated by Catherine, and in this particular letter, told his wife, “She will rob you of your last cent if you will let her.” 79 The number is extraordinary given that Jewett charged Stowe 56 cents for a copy of the two-volume edition bound in cloth (see Charles E. Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 159). This copy was presented by Calvin to Philip Greeley, who had advised him during his negotiations with Jewett (Wilson, Crusader, p. 279).

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a sign of sympathy or respect for deserving unfortunates.80 As a result of the various advances and charges to Stowe’s account, she was left with $2,598.12, for which Jewett gave her a “note of six months.” Stowe most likely received around $30,000 from Jewett for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Numerous stage adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the United States did not, however, bring her any financial compensation.81 The absence of an international copyright agreement left foreign publishers free rein to reprint the work without paying the author. In 1867, James Parton selected Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the best illustration of the consequences of this lack of legislation: “There is an American lady living at Hartford, in Connecticut, whom the United States has permitted to be robbed by foreigners of $200,000. Her name is Harriet Beecher Stowe.”82 According to Parton, Stowe had received nothing or next to nothing from foreign editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Parton was only partly correct, however. Stowe received money from at least three British publishers, as she herself told Eliza Cabot Follen in December 1852. Thomas Bosworth, Clarke and Co., and Richard Bentley had all offered her an interest in the sales of their editions.83 Bosworth was the first to do so, and he brought out an “Author’s Edition” of the novel in September 1852, with a note stating that Stowe had a direct pecuniary interest in this edition. Another edition issued in November 1852 confirmed this information, since it included a letter from Stowe, expressing her gratitude for the publisher’s very liberal proposal. His show of generosity allowed

80

See, for instance, HBS to Gamaliel Bailey, 18 April (1852), in which she tells him she wants the captain and first mate of the schooner Pearl to receive a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and $10 each. Both were in jail for helping fugitive slaves escape (see Key, pp. 155–68 for the whole story). bMS Am 1569.7 (596), HO L. 81 Performance rights were granted to the owner of the copyright of a play in 1856, but not until 1870 did Congress grant authors the right to dramatize or translate their own works. In Stowe versus Thomas (1853), the court turned down the Stowes’ suit against an unauthorized German translation (which was to compete with the translation that Jewett was bringing out) on the grounds that 1) the characters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were public property, 2) “imitators, playrights and poetasters” were free to use “all her conceptions and inventions,” and 3) translation was a creation, not a copy. Copyright law thus applied only to the “printing, publishing, importing or vending without her license ‘copies of her book.’” See Melissa J. Homestead, American Women Authors, Chapter 3, for a full analysis of the case and its implications. 82 James Parton blamed the American government for the lack of legislation, not the British, French or German governments which, he asserted, were quite willing to enter into such an agreement. James Parton, “International Copyright,” The Atlantic Monthly, October 1867: 430–51. Parton was an editor and writer, who married Fanny Fern, a popular writer and Stowe’s former schoolfellow. Stowe wrote to thank him for his concern: “The very idea that I might could would or should have been by this time worth two hundred thousand dollars, which has been lost lost [sic] to me thro the want of care of my countrymen I assure you fills me with horror!” HBS to James Parton, undated, Fanny Fern and Ethel Parton Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. 83 HBS to Eliza Cabot Follen, 16 December 1852, letter reprinted in Hedrick’s Reader, pp. 71–6.


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Bosworth to appeal to the moral fiber of the British reading public, and was rewarded besides by a preface Stowe wrote “expressly for this edition.”84 Bosworth promised to give Stowe six cents a copy.85 In one of their editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Clarke and Co. claimed they had given Stowe $2,500 as her part of the profits, and they too offered readers the special incentive of “A New Preface by Harriet Beecher Stowe.”86 It is unclear whether Bentley actually did pay Stowe. He evidently intended to do so in order to secure her future works;87 he was disappointed in this hope, however, since she had already chosen Sampson Low, “who was in this country and made personal application,” to be her authorized publisher.88 Bentley did bring out Uncle Tom’s Cabin as No. 121 of his “Standard Novels” series, but did not tout it as an “Author’s Edition,” and neither did he add a note to that effect in the volume. Stowe’s authorized British publisher, Sampson Low, seems to have signed Stowe on a half-profits arrangement.89 When Stowe travelled to England in 1853, she received around $20,000 from the “Penny Offering,” an initiative prompted by an awareness that the novelist would

84 Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Life among the Lowly, London, Thomas Bosworth, 1852; the first edition was received at the British Museum on 29 September 1852, the second on 24 November 1852. 85 The sum is mentioned in The Voice of the Fugitive (Sandwich, Canada), 4 November 1852, quoted in Chester E. Jorgenson, Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Book and Legend, p. 39. Bosworth’s first edition sold for 3s 6d: see their advertisement in The Publishers’ Circular (London), 1 September 1852. 86 “Notice.—Author’s Editions,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America (London, C.H. Clarke and Co., 1852). The notice precedes the title page. Stowe’s “new preface” was included in Uncle Tom’s Cabin; or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America (London, Clarke, Beeton and Co. [successors to C.H. Clarke], shilling edition, 225th thousand, undated but probably 1853). The preface was almost word for word the one Stowe had written for the Tauchnitz edition published in Germany in 1852. Clarke and Co. offered Stowe 10 per cent on the sales of their editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin from 1 October 1852, and a lump sum of £500 on the sales of the novel until that date: HBS to Richard Bentley, 1 December 1852, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318 etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. 87 Richard Bentley to William H. Prescott, 21 June and 26 October 1852, William Hickling Prescott Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 88 HBS to Richard Bentley, 1 December 1852, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318 etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. The disappointment may have been somewhat mitigated by the assurance that “Mrs. Stowe comes from an eccentric family and is herself eccentric,” and that she would never write another “Uncle Tom” (Richard B. Kimball to Richard Bentley, 4 January 1853, Papers of Richard B. Kimball, MSS 7813, Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa). 89 At least for Dred (CES to HBS, 30 December 1856, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC).

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receive no royalties for the English editions of her work. By way of compensation, each reader was encouraged to contribute one penny to the author.90 James Parton was therefore guilty of some exaggeration when he claimed that Stowe had received nothing, or next to nothing, for foreign editions of her work. At the same time, sales figures in Britain demonstrate that Parton did have a point. The various issues of The Publishers’ Circular (London) list an amazing number of separate editions of Stowe’s novel, published between May 1852 and the spring of 1853—nine editions for the second fortnight of September 1852, another nine for the first fortnight of October, a paltry five for the first two weeks of November, and so on. According to Sampson Low, around 40 editions of the novel were issued by 18 different London publishing houses in the year that followed the publication of the first British edition, in April 1852. Low estimated the novel had sold a million and a half copies in England and its colonies.91 From this perspective, Stowe indeed received next to nothing. Jewett’s “Lucky Star” Sets The popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin represented a windfall for its publisher. The credit reporting agency R.G. Dun and Co. estimated that Uncle Tom’s Cabin would yield profits for the Boston firm in excess of $50,000; the Cleveland Branch was tentatively reported to have made between $15,000 and $20,000 on Stowe’s novel.92 Jewett naturally capitalized on the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and its author. In 1852, in addition to the novel, he issued Stowe’s sketch, “The Two-Altars,” initially published in The New York Evangelist.93 The following year, Jewett provided younger readers with an adaptation entitled Pictures and Stories from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a 30-page illustrated paper-covered volume, that sold for 12 cents.94 He also brought 90

Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 240. On the Continent, at least one publisher, Tauchnitz, gave her money. In a letter to Sampson Low, Calvin noted that Tauchnitz “did handsomely by us with Uncle Tom” (CES to Sampson Low, 14 July 1856, Sampson Low’s Autograph Book No. 2, Book History Archive, Open University, Milton Keynes, England). 91 Sampson Low, quoted in Charles Edward Stowe, Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 189–90; the first English edition, issued jointly by Vizetelly and Clarke and Co., was listed in the new works published between 13 and 29 April 1852 (The Publishers’ Circular, 1 May 1852). For British reactions to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see Audrey A. Fisch, American Slaves in Victorian England: Abolitionist Politics in Popular Literature and Culture (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2000). 92 Massachusetts-Suffolk-Boston, vol. 68, p. 317 (entry dated 9 March 1853); OhioCuyahoga, vol. 40, p. 88 (entry dated 10 September 1853), R.G. Dun and Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. 93 Lyle H. Wright, American Fiction 1851–1875: A Contribution toward a Bibliography (San Marino, CA, The Huntington Library, 1957), p. 320. 94 The illustrations were designed by M. Jackson Sc.; the adaptation itself bore no author’s name, but the poems were by Stowe, according to a note from the “Editor,” dated January


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out Key in a pamphlet edition similar to the inexpensive edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. This version of Key sold for 50 cents;95 an entirely new edition of Key, in one clothbound volume, appeared in 1854. It was not illustrated, and sold for $1. Jewett also issued a German translation in paper covers, at 50 cents. In addition, he brought out Stowe’s Earthly Care, A Heavenly Discipline, a small 16-page religious work, in paper wrappers, priced at 6 cents, and reissued regularly throughout the 1850s. On top of all this, he bought the rights to Mayflower, initially published by Harper and Brothers, which he issued with his own imprint in 1853.96 Stowe wrote prefaces to two anti-slavery works that Jewett published as well: C.G. Parson’s Inside View of Slavery (1855), and Josiah Henson’s Truth Stranger than Fiction: Father Henson’s Story of His Own Life (1858). While Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Jewett’s most impressive success, it was hardly the only one. He reportedly sold 90,000 copies of Stowe’s Key, 90,000 copies, too, of Maria Cummins’s novel The Lamplighter (1854), 42,000 copies of Martha Stone Hubbell’s The Shady Side; or, Life in a Country Parsonage (1853), a work that capitalized on the success of Elizabeth Stuart Phelps’s The Sunny Side; or, The Country Minister’s Wife, which had sold 100,000 copies in 1851.97 His textbooks and practical books also did well: he sold 35,000 copies of his Instructors for Violin and Flute, 200,000 of A Grammar of the English Language (William Harvey Wells, 1847), and 34,000 copies of Samuel W. Cole’s The American Veterinarian; or, Diseases of Domestic Animals (1847). Henry Ward Beecher’s Lectures to Young Men topped out at 26,000 by the end of 1854. By this time, Jewett had given as much as $70,000 in cash to authors in three years, $30,000 of which had gone to Stowe.98 Jewett’s firm was therefore quite prosperous, and the publisher decided to leave his “straitened quarters” in Cornhill in order to move to “a most commodious and beautiful store” in Washington street, as Norton noted in August 1854.99 Two years later, the American Publishers’ Circular—the successor to Norton—mentioned Jewett as an apt illustration of success “achieved by bold enterprise, industry, and perseverance.” Another reason why Jewett’s business was thriving was that he issued books that “find an echo in the human heart.” With Maria J. MacIntosh and Caroline Lee Hentz on his 1853. 95 A cloth-covered version of this edition was priced at 75 cents: see O.A. Roorbach, Supplement to the Bibliotheca Americana (New York, Orville A. Roorbach, Jr, May 1855), p. 188, and the invoice of Jewett, Proctor and Worthington, in the “Catalogue of the TwentySeventh Cincinnati Trade Sale, Starts September 11, 1854, S.G. Hubbard,” AAS. 96 For a complete list, see Michael Winship, “John Punchard Jewett.” 97 Hart, The Popular Book, p. 111. 98 For the sales figures of these works, see The New York Times, 20 December 1854, UVa web and Norton, 15 January 1855, “Literary Intelligence.” Both papers reprinted the figures from the Boston Traveller. Once again, Jewett may well have provided the figures himself. 99 “Correspondence,” American Publishers’ Circular, 15 August 1854: 407–408. An engraving of Jewett’s new bookstore, originally printed in Gleason’s Pictorial (2 December 1854), is reproduced in Richard D. Brown, Knowledge Is Power: The Diffusion of Information in Early America, 1700–1865 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 289.

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list, the journal’s correspondent concluded, “it is not reasonable to suppose that the ‘lucky star’ of John P. Jewett and Co. has yet set.”100 The agents of R.G. Dun and Co. were more measured in their assessment of Jewett’s prospects: Jewett, according to them, was not “over-cautious” in his publications, and kept himself short of money by constantly investing in new works. Proctor, Jewett’s partner, retired in early 1857; as Michael Winship has noted, “the withdrawal of Proctor’s capital could not have come at a worse time, for the tightening of credit and lack of ready money that was to lead to the Panic of 1857 meant that Jewett had difficulty raising money.” In May 1857, Jewett was forced to mortgage stereotype plates for $10,000, and R.G. Dun and Co. glumly reported in August 1857 that the publisher’s credit in Boston was poor. That same month, Jewett had to sell his bookstore, and his business failed in September 1857. Yet Jewett continued in the publishing business. An assignee was appointed, and capital was lent by a former governor of Maine, William G. Crosby. As late as November 1859, Jewett wrote to Lucy Larcom to enquire if she had enough poems “to make a book.” Although in February 1859 Jewett was reported as having credit “for modest amounts,” and in April 1860 as “working along fairly,” he was “out of the book business” by the summer of 1860.101 The American Publishers’ Circular, noting Jewett’s invoice in its account of the Boston trade sale of August 1860, remarked that John P. Jewett and Co. was “about to close their book trade for the purpose of entering a new field of enterprise.”102 The catalogue of the August 1859 Boston trade sale indicates that Jewett was trying to dispose of, among others, large lots of two popular works, The Lamplighter and Caroline Lee Hentz’s Ernest Linwood. Stowe’s Earthly Care sold in lots of two hundred. No work by Stowe, nor any stereotype plates for any of her works, appeared in Jewett’s invoice for the Boston trade sale of August 1860.103 The Cleveland branch felt the direct consequences of the Boston failure. Jewett, Proctor and Worthington were initially highly praised by R.G. Dun’s agents, and even the death of Worthington, in September 1854, did not appear to darken the prospects 100 “One

93–6.

Letter from Boston,” American Publishers’ Circular, 16 February 1856:

101 See Michael Winship, “John P. Jewett,” and Massachusetts-Suffolk-Boston, vol. 68, p. 317, entries dated 29 January and 12 July 1855; 28 November 1856; 15 May, 7 August, 10 August, 28 September, and 24 October 1857; 3 March 1858; 20 July 1859; MassachusettsSuffolk-Boston, vol. 67, p. 106 A, entries dated 11 June 1858, 2 February 1859, 2 April and 15 August 1860; R.G. Dun and Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. John P. Jewett to Lucy Larcom, 7 November 1859, Lucy Larcom Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. 102 “Literary Intelligence,” American Publishers’ Circular, 11 August 1860: 403. Jewett went on to sell “Peruvian Syrup,” and was then briefly associated with a match factory, before going back into publishing in New York. Most of these ventures seem to have been either unsuccessful or quite modest (see Michael Winship, “John Punchard Jewett”). 103 Joseph Leonard and Co., “Catalogue, Boston Trade Sale, Commencing August 2, 1859,” and Leonard and Co., “Catalogue, Boston Trade Sale, Starting August 1, 1860.” Both are kept at the Boston Public Library.


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of the remaining partners. Proctor (“Deacon” Proctor’s son) withdrew in August 1856 and, even though he seems to have had most of the capital of the firm, R.G. Dun’s agent deemed that Jewett, who was “a first-rate businessman, prompt, attentive, and efficient,” would have no problem carrying on the business by himself. Circumstances changed abruptly in September 1857, as a terse note in R.G. Dun’s records reveals: “Assigned, pay 60 cents, cause, failure of Boston House.” The Cleveland branch was to compromise with its creditors, and carry on with its business until July 1859, when its assets were sold out to mortagees.104 John P. Jewett’s “lucky star” had indeed set, contradicting the optimistic predictions made in February 1856 by the American Publishers’ Circular. In May of the same year, the trade journal, advising publishers to bring out books that would last, “not for a day, but for all time,” hinted at a similar fate for Uncle Tom’s Cabin. “Mrs. Stowe,” the commentator declared, “held sway for a time.”105 That time, he implied, was now past. But this prediction would of course also prove wrong.

104 Ohio-Cuyahoga, vol. 40, p. 88 (entries dated, among others, 20 April 1854, 23 September

1854, 23 August 1856); vol. 40, p. 242 (entries dated 29 September 1857, 10 July 1858, 22 July 1859), R.G. Dun and Co. Collection, Baker Library, Harvard Business School. 105 “Signs of the Times,” American Publishers’ Circular, 24 May 1856: 202–203.


Chapter 6

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1863–1893 I

Phillips, Sampson and Co., Ticknor and Fields, and Their Successors, 1853–1878

“I would like to ask you also definitely Are [sic] you ready to put up Uncle Tom uniform with my other works so as to commence the sale of sets.” This is the question Stowe posed to Phillips, Sampson and Co., in 1858, an ironical twist of fate, for she had now begun to work with the very firm that had rejected Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. Between 1854 and 1858, Phillips, Sampson and Co. brought out several of Stowe’s works, including Dred, her second anti-slavery novel (1856). “I know not why,” the writer continued, “‘Stowes [sic] works’ should not stand by the side of Hawthorne […] and others next Christmas—please write me about it—if so I will take instant steps to prepare it with the introduction I spoke of.” This letter is typical of Stowe’s active involvement in the publishing and marketing of her works. She had written a number of prefaces to Uncle Tom’s Cabin and was clearly prepared to do her part in promoting the book if necessary. It also indicates that Stowe considered herself on a par with Hawthorne, whose publishers, Ticknor and Fields, were soon to become her publishers too. That she compared herself with Hawthorne is hardly surprising: when Phillips, Sampson had launched The Atlantic Monthly, in 1857, they had made Stowe’s contribution a priority, with Hawthorne only coming next. As Calvin noted, “They all say—‘Mrs Stowe must begin with a serial and give us her wings for the first year, and Hawthorne shall follow on in the second’.” Stowe was obviously interested in the fate of her first novel, yet her letter to Moses D. Phillips makes clear that she was more concerned with seeing her works published in a uniform set. The allusions to Hawthorne and to the right timing for the set point to two reasons why Stowe favored such a publication: 1) a uniform edition would HBS

to Moses D. Phillips, 2 January 1858, Katharine S. Day Collection, HBSC. Despite Stowe’s remark, the first collected edition of Hawthorne’s works came out after the author died in 1864. See Michael Winship, “Hawthorne and the ‘Scribbling Women’”: 7. Stowe may have been thinking of the brown cloth cover in which Hawthorne’s works were bound, and which was the standard binding for many books published by Ticknor and Fields: see Jeffrey D. Groves, “Judging Literary Books by Their Covers: House Styles, Ticknor and Fields, and Literary Promotion,” in Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles (eds), Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 75–100. CES to HBS, 4 May 1857, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC.

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grant her works additional prestige; and 2) a collected edition made sound financial sense, especially if it came out during the holiday season. As Simon Gatrell has noted, authors find collected editions attractive on three grounds, namely fame, money, and the opportunity it gives them to revise earlier works. Uncle Tom’s Cabin had not been reprinted since 1853, and a collected edition would see the book in print again, while a new paratext might hopefully allow the novel to reach a new audience. Phillips, Sampson and Co. was not, however, to publish Stowe’s works in a uniform set, nor would the firm issue a new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Both partners died in 1859, and the house went bankrupt. The New York firm of Derby and Jackson became Stowe’s new publisher and agreed to honor Stowe’s contract from Phillips, Sampson and Co. “as it stands.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not mentioned in the new arrangements. In 1859–1860, Stowe took her third trip to Europe, this time to secure English copyright for The Minister’s Wooing. She also visited Italy, and met James and Annie Fields in Florence. Stowe changed the date of her return to the United States so that she could travel on the same ship as the Fields. As she explained to Annie Fields, she intended to talk business with the publisher. While in Italy, Stowe had written the first chapter of her new novel, Agnes of Sorrento, and she wanted The Atlantic Monthly to serialize it. The magazine had been taken over by Ticknor and Fields, after Phillips, Sampson and Co. failed in 1859, and James T. Fields would succeed James Russell Lowell as its editor in June 1861. Agnes ran in The Atlantic Monthly from May 1861 to April of the following year, and Ticknor and Fields published it in book form in 1862. Under successive imprints, the Boston house would continue to issue many of Stowe’s works. Because Ticknor and Fields was equated with quality literature, Stowe became part of the prestigious list which included Longfellow, Hawthorne, and Emerson, among others.10 Simon Gatrell, “The Collected Editions of Hardy, James, and Meredith, with Some Concluding Thoughts on the Desirability of a Taxonomy of the Book,” in Andrew Nash (ed.), The Culture of Collected Editions (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), pp. 80–94. John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 1, pp. 425–6. Henry Ward Beecher to HBS, 1 and 4 October 1859, HBS Microfilm Collection, YL. Annie Fields, Life and Letters, pp. 254–7. HBS to Annie Fields, Paris, 28 May (1860), Fields Collection, FI 3987, HL. Men of Our Times; or, Leading Patriots of the Day, a series of sketches of eminent men, was issued by the Hartford Publishing Company in 1868; Pink and White Tyranny was published by Robert Brothers (Boston) in 1871; several of Stowe’s works were published by J.B. Ford (New York), who also published The Christian Union in which some of Stowe’s works were serialized prior to being issued in book format (for instance, My Wife and I: or, Harry Henderson’s History, 1872); After J.B. Ford failed, its successors, Fords, Howard and Hulbert (New York) published several of Stowe’s works, including Poganuc People (1878). 10 W.S. Tryon notes that although it was not the largest publishing house in the United States, or even in Boston, Ticknor and Fields was the nation’s leading publisher of fine literature (Parnassus Corner, p. 228).

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1863–1893

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The Stereotype Plates of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Change Hands On 9 August 1860, Stowe sent a telegram from Andover, MA, to Ticknor and Fields in Boston. The message was concise: “Please buy at once.”11 The next day, Jewett asked his printers, Rand and Avery, to turn over the plates of the two-volume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to Joseph Leonard and Co., the auctioneers who had handled the Boston trade sale. A note from Leonard to Rand and Avery, dated 6 September 1860, requested that the printers “deliver the enclosed to Ticknor & Fields today,”12 which unquestionably refers to the plates of the novel. Although Jewett’s message only alludes to the two-volume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Ticknor and Fields most likely bought the three series of plates that Jewett had manufactured for the different editions of the work. They purchased the plates of the inexpensive onevolume edition,13 which would be reprinted, complete with mistakes (though with the addition of illustrations), by Houghton, Mifflin in 1882. The plates of the luxury one-volume edition would not be used again, but an 1870 letter from Stowe to Fields indicates that they had also been purchased.14 Jewett remained in possession of the plates of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for most of the decade following its first publication. Phillips, Sampson did not see the need to buy the plates from Jewett and produce another edition. Ticknor and Fields would not reprint Uncle Tom’s Cabin before November 1862, when they issued a modest run of 270 copies.15 In the early 1860s, Stowe never mentioned her first novel in her correspondence with publishers. She was more concerned with new novels she was working on. As it happens, author, publisher and audience seem to have been content to focus on Stowe’s new productions, and, at the onset of the Civil War, to find solace in novels that carried them back to a less troubled past (with the exploration of early New England in The Minister’s Wooing) or took them to distant lands (with Agnes of Sorrento, set in Italy). Ticknor and Fields: The 1863 Contract In 1855, the Massachusetts legislature granted married women the right to sign contracts and keep their earnings, and Stowe’s new contract, dated 25 March 1863, was 11 Telegram signed HB Stowe, sent to “Ticknor & Field” [sic]. bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 12 John P. Jewett to Messrs Rand and Avery, 10 (?) August 1860; Leonard and Co. to Messrs Rand and Avery, 6 September 1860. bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 13 See Winship, “The Greatest Book of Its Kind”: note 35, p. 324. That they paid $29.20 for the plates, that is, $0.07 per pound, suggests, according to Winship, that “the plates were being valued as scrap metal.” The price included the eight boxes in which the plates were kept (at 37 cents a box). 14 Suggesting a new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin specifically aimed at the Southern public, the writer remarked: “We own the illustrations of Uncle Tom.” HBS to James T. Fields, 13 February 1870, Fields Collection, FI 4037, HL. 15 Winship, “The Greatest Book of Its Kind”: 324–5.

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signed by the writer herself.16 The wording of the contract—which, strangely enough, was signed after the publishers had issued a first reprint in November 1862—clearly indicates that Stowe was the owner of the plates which she leased to her publishers: Contract Mrs H.B. Stowe Uncle Tom Minister’s Wooing May Flower March 25 1863 Between Harriet Beecher Stowe and William D. Ticknor and James T. Fields. The said Mrs Stowe hereby conveys to the said Ticknor and Fields, their heirs representatives and assigns the sole right to publish the said works, during the continuance of this agreement. The said Ticknor & Fields shall publish the said works in good style and at their own expense and risk, and shall pay to the said Mrs Stowe, her heirs representatives and assigns as a consideration for the copyright and use of stereotype plates of said work [sic], the sum of Eighteen cents on every copy of each work which shall be sold.17

The contract stipulated that accounts and payments would be made every six months, and that the agreement was to last for the remainder of the copyright of each of the above-named works. Stowe had therefore once again changed formulas for this contract. She had received from Jewett a 10 per cent royalty for Uncle Tom’s Cabin and A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. After numerous conversations with both English and American publishers had made it clear that she would have made more money under the system of half profits, she felt cheated. Not surprisingly, then, she opted for the half-profits formula when she signed with Phillips, Sampson and her English publisher, Sampson Low, for Dred. However, she soon realized that the contract was less profitable than expected, since she made a combined total of $20,000 on the sales of Dred in the United States and in England, whereas the American edition had sold 150,000 copies and the English counterpart had reached a sales figure of 165,000.18 At the end of 1856, Calvin was outraged to learn that the English edition of Dred would bring in a much lower amount than expected. He could not understand “why Low’s half profits should be so much less than Jewett’s ten per cent.”19 Stowe, however, signed the same type of contract with Ticknor and Fields. The March 1863 contract only applied to works that had already been published, and for 16 See

note 32 in Chapter 2. bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 18 See Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 263. Stowe would quote the same figures in a letter written a few years later: “On Dred I made ten thousand in England and an equal sum in America.” HBS to James T. Fields, undated letter (1868?), Fields Collection, FI 3962, HL. 19 CES to HBS, Andover, 30 December 1856, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. In the same letter, Calvin warns his wife that the American edition will bring in only half of the $30,000 or $50,000 she expects. 17


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her new novels, Stowe opted for half profits. The contract for Agnes of Sorrento, for instance, stipulated that writer and publisher would share the cost of publication, and the profits. Stowe and her publishers would jointly own the plates of the novel.20 The 1863 agreement was not unusual for Ticknor and Fields. Already in the 1850s, a number of their authors owned the stereotype plates of their works. For the author, the initial investment was high, but it was usually compensated by higher royalties. In 1856, among the 26 American works whose authors owned the plates, 16 provided their authors with a 20 per cent royalty. Two of the writers, however, received 10 and 12 per cent only, which hints at the possibility that Ticknor and Fields did not expect great profits from those works.21 Stowe’s 18 cents per copy sold corresponds to a 12 per cent royalty on books sold at $1.50. This, at any rate, was the case between 1862 and 1864. When, in 1864, the retail price increased to $1.75, Stowe’s royalty remained unchanged, and the 1866 hike which brought the price to $2.00 meant that Stowe’s royalty was a paltry 9 per cent.22 Of course a fixed royalty figure for each volume could turn out to be less profitable than a percentage, since the sum would in the first case remain similar even if the price of the book was raised. Reprints of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1863–1878 Under the successive imprints of Ticknor and Fields (1854–1868), Fields, Osgood and Co. (1868–1871), and James R. Osgood (1871–1878), the plates of Jewett’s twovolume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin would regularly be used for reprints in the 1860s and 1870s. The changing imprints reflect the history of the Boston publishing house, whose name remained unchanged after the death (in 1864) of founder William D. Ticknor. However, when the younger Ticknor withdrew from the house in 1868, it was rechristened Fields, Osgood and Co., after the names of the two new partners. When Fields left at the beginning of 1871, the imprint became James R. Osgood and Co. Financial difficulties led the house to merge with the printing and publishing firm of Hurd and Houghton—owners of the prestigious Riverside Press in Cambridge—under the name of Houghton, Osgood and Co., which in 1880 became Houghton, Mifflin and Co., and in 1908 Houghton Mifflin Co.23 After the first printing of 270 copies in November 1862, then a second of 516 copies in 1863, Ticknor and Fields reprinted Uncle Tom’s Cabin each year throughout the 1860s and 1870s, bringing out on average 1,000 copies a year in the first decade, and double that number during the following decade. Jewett’s plates for the two-volume edition were last used in December 1878, when this edition was discontinued.24 Very few modifications were made to the plates; typographical mistakes remained 20

The contract is dated 2 April 1862, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. Michael Winship: American Literary Publishing, pp. 134–5. 22 Winship, “The Greatest Book of Its Kind”: 324. 23 See M. Winship, American Literary Publishing, pp. 15–23. 24 Sheet Stock Account, fMS Am 2030.2 (22 and 23); Copyright Accounts, Ms Am 2030.2 (47 and 48), HO L. 21

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uncorrected, for example, and Chapter 8 still had no heading. For obvious reasons, however, the title page was altered to accommodate the change in publishers and in the thousandth statements. Just as Jewett had printed “Sixtieth Thousand,” for instance, on the title page, the volumes issued by Ticknor and Fields and their successors allowed the prospective buyer to feel encouraged that 311,000 (Ticknor and Fields, 1863), 316,000 (Fields, Osgood and Co., 1872), or again 335,000 (James R. Osgood and Co., 1877) copies had been considered worth purchasing.25 Unlike Jewett, Ticknor and Fields chose the less expensive option of two volumes bound in one, complete with two title pages.26 The volumes were generally bound in cloth, with geometric patterns replacing the engraving of the cabin featured on the covers of Jewett’s two-volume edition. Ticknor and Fields seems to have thought it unnecessary to bring the book out in luxury bindings or with gilt edges. The 1863 contract included Uncle Tom’s Cabin as one of three previously published works which Ticknor and Fields had agreed to reprint. That they introduced very few changes to the original plates (not even bothering to correct some glaring typographical errors), points to a certain lack of interest in Stowe’s first novel. Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin: 1863–1877 Stowe was apparently just as indifferent as her publishers about the fate of her first novel. After 1852–1853, and the abundance of letters and prefaces devoted to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, its inception and its reception, references to the novel in her correspondence were scarce.27 Calvin was the one who, in 1867, worried about the renewal of the copyright, and then only mildly, merely asking Fields about it, and remarking that a friend of his had drawn his attention to the necessity to renew the copyright after 14 years had elapsed.28 25 The Ticknor and Fields records demonstrate that the thousandth statements corresponded to the number of copies actually printed. 26 They may also have preferred the one-volume formula because it had become the standard format by the 1860s, as a letter from Stowe to Fields underscores: “As to style, if I must be confined to one volume as seems best now a days [sic] …” HBS to James T. Fields, 8 August (1867), Fields Collection, FI 3990, HL. 27 Yet she seems to have dedicated in advance a series of copies of the work meant for Union soldiers, perhaps as a reminder of the cause they were fighting for; this is suggested by the absence of the recipient’s name in her dedication of the copy of an 1863 edition: “In token of sympathy with patriotic spirit from HB Stowe.” The facing fly leaf bears an inscription from the owner of the book: “Lt Wm. C. Manning ‘Wilds African Brigade’ Before Charleston, S. Ca. October 1863.” General Edward A. Wild’s brigade was composed of African-American soldiers, hence its name (copy in the HBSC). 28 CES to James T. Fields, Hartford, 23 March 1867, Fields Collection, FI 3906, HL. As a matter of fact, the publisher did not need to renew the copyright at this time; in 1831, the initial period during which a work was protected by copyright had been increased from 14 to 28 years (G. Thomas Tanselle, Selected Studies in Bibliography, Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1979, p. 105).


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In 1864, Stowe told Fields she had just received a letter from a Philadelphia publisher who wanted to bring out a “toy book Uncle Tom” and requested her permission to do so. Although Stowe was rather favorably inclined to the project, as “it might be a good advertisement,” she left the final decision to Fields.29 Not until 1870 did Stowe suggest a new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one aimed especially at Southern readers. In her letter to Fields, Stowe submitted two proposals, a new edition of Oldtown Folks, and a new edition of her first novel: The other plan is to get up a new illustrated edition of Uncle Tom to be sold by agents for the Southern market. In this consider—It was for years a forbidden book here. Many have heard of but never seen it. A whole generation of reading and writing colored people have come up and I think the pictorial edition now might be sold to thousands of colored families—Think of that too—It would however need to be an agency book. Books to do any thing here in these southern states must be sold by agents. The population is sparse and they are (engrossed?) in worldly (lives?) and need to be put up to read—Yet there is money [on hand?] even down to the colored families […] We own the illustrations of Uncle Tom—Why not try it?30

The idea of a new edition quite likely came to Stowe because of the situation she observed during her frequent stays in Florida, where she bought an orange plantation at the end of the 1860s.31 Yet the writer had been convinced for some time that the sale of books by agents was an effective means by which to distribute books among those far from bookshops. Thanks to agents, this particular public could be made to appreciate books, which would in turn expand the potential market for American publishers.32 In spite of Stowe’s enthusiasm for the new project, it would not come to fruition. No further mention of it can be found in the writer’s correspondence, and the publisher probably deemed it still too early to distribute Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the South. After all, barely three years before Stowe advanced her proposal, Calvin had asked Fields to write to Stowe under cover of “Spencer Foote, Esq.,” explaining that, “We do not send any letter so far South as Florida with the portentous name of Mrs H.B. Stowe on the outside ….”33 That old wounds created by the novel had not yet healed can be seen in Southern opposition to theatrical adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as late as

29

HBS to James T. Fields, Andover (February 1864?), Fields Collection, FI 3932, HL. to James T. Fields, Mandarin, Florida, 13 February 1870, Fields Collection, FI 4037, HL. 31 Joan Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. 330. 32 In 1868, Stowe published Men of our Times with the Hartford Publishing Company, a subscription firm. She considered that subscription houses made money by exploiting writers, but was impressed by the number of copies their agents were able to dispose of: HBS to James Parton, 6 February 1868, Fanny Fern and Ethel Parton Papers, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College. 33 Calvin E. Stowe to James T. Fields, 8 March 1867, Fields Collection, FI 3907, HL. 30 HBS

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the 1870s.34 Stowe sometimes reacted strongly to the rejection of her proposals, but this does not appear to have been the case here, since she did not allude to the project again. Her silence, however, cannot be taken to mean that she had lost all interest in the novel that made her famous. In an 1866 letter to the Duchess of Argyle, Stowe explained that she had just re-read the novel to take the full measure of the changes that had occurred since 1852, and to thank God for the abolition of slavery.35 But the scarcity of references to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Stowe’s correspondence also reflects the active life and career of the writer at the time. She wrote one book after another, articles that would be reprinted in book form, and stories for children; she co-edited the magazine Hearth and Home, read manuscripts and advised their authors, and occasionally put in a word of recommendation on their behalf. She took care of her family, built a house in Hartford, Connecticut, bought a cotton plantation in Florida, and then an orange grove. She was never without work and her almostconstant financial worries suggest that she could not afford to refuse a commission by a publisher, though she was sometimes to rue her decision, as was the case with the edition of a series of portraits of famous Americans entitled Men of Our Times.36 Only towards the end of her career, in 1878, would Stowe have enough time to return to her first novel. She would then devote a great deal of energy to the preparation of what was really the first entirely new edition since 1852. Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Sales Figures and Royalties, 1863 to 1878 The cost books of Ticknor and Fields and their successors, housed at the Houghton Library at Harvard, provide detailed information in respect to the reprints of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the numbers of copies sold, and the percentage paid to the author. The novel sold modestly but steadily throughout the 1860s, and Stowe received an average yearly royalty of slightly over $170. Americans do not seem to have felt the need to re-read Uncle Tom’s Cabin during the Civil War—the book sold around 500 copies per year in 1863 and 1864. The decline in the sale of all books during the Civil War is hardly surprising, yet a few bestsellers show that indeed a public demand existed for certain types of books. The translation of Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables, for instance, enjoyed an astounding success in 1863–1864, with some 120,000 copies in circulation. Parson Brownlow’s books of propaganda for the Union were also extremely popular during the war.37 The sluggish sales of Uncle Tom’s Cabin during the war years may reflect the fact that the Northerners took a greater interest in the current situation (as the popularity of Brownlow’s works tend to indicate). It may also mean that many families already owned a copy or, perhaps, that the public preferred

34 See

Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, pp. 372–6. to the Duchess of Argyle, 19 February 1866, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318 etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. 36 See Joan Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Chapters 24 and 25, for a description of Stowe’s unceasing activities during this period. 37 James D. Hart, The Popular Book, pp. 114–16. 35 HBS


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to purchase new works by Stowe. Agnes of Sorrento and The Pearl of Orr’s Island, both published by Ticknor and Fields in 1862, sold quite well, and Stowe received over $6,000 in royalties for the two books combined in 1863. Both novels were regularly reprinted throughout the 1860s.38 The Union victory in 1865 signalled a renewed public interest in Uncle Tom’s Cabin: 1,750 copies were sold that year, which makes it the best year of the decade for Stowe’s first novel. The sales figures then fell back to an average 500 to 1,000 volumes per year until the end of the 1860s.39 Stowe’s royalties for the book increased to over $300 for 1865, only to plummet to about $100 in the following years. If 1865 had been a high point for the novel, 1870 was the worst year in two decades, with the sale of only 280 copies. This may well be due to a scandal provoked by the writer herself. The year before, Stowe published an article entitled “The True Story of Lady Byron” in The Atlantic Monthly, in which she revealed the incestuous relationship between Lord Byron and his half-sister. The publication of that story, which Stowe had heard from the lips of Lady Byron herself, raised an enormous outcry on both sides of the Atlantic and caused the periodical to lose a number of its subscribers.40 The sales figures of Uncle Tom’s Cabin rose again after 1872, perhaps thanks to a series of public readings Stowe undertook in New England in 1872 and in the West the following year.41 Between 1872 and 1878, the book sold an average of 2,500 copies a year, which provided Stowe with a yearly royalty of $450 for her first novel. It is clear, however, that with all the ups and downs in sales, Uncle Tom’s Cabin occupied a special place among her works. The example of 1873 is significant. That year marked the publication of Palmetto Leaves, a collection of articles about Florida that had previously appeared in the Christian Union, a periodical edited by Stowe’s brother Henry Ward Beecher. It sold about 4,000 copies, but the sale of Stowe’s earlier works—The Minister’s Wooing, Agnes, and Pearl, for example—hovered around 100. Americans, meanwhile, bought over 2,000 copies of Stowe’s first novel. The publisher had done nothing to remind readers of the existence of the book, and no effort was made to make its presentation more attractive. Moreover, since the new editions were merely reprints, the publishers seldom sent copies to the press for review (eleven copies were sent out in 1876, according to the cost books). The newspapers were therefore not called upon to comment upon new editions, which would have ensured a sort of free publicity. Yet in spite of the absence of marketing strategies, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was alone among Stowe’s works to enjoy a lasting popularity. After its incredible initial

38

Copyright Accounts, Ms Am 2030.2 (47), HO L. The work was not forgotten, however; in an unsigned article entitled “Grits,” published in the Atlantic Monthly of April 1865, the journalist celebrated Stowe and her first novel without once naming either. Both were evidently so well known that readers did not need actual names (The Atlantic Monthly, April 1865: 407–19). 40 Joan Hedrick, Reader, p. 531. 41 Joan Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, pp. 383–5. For evidence that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was part of the works Stowe read from, see Annie Fields, Life and Letters, p. 344. 39

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success, followed by the relative disinterest during the next years, the book acquired in the 1860s and, most especially in the 1870s, the status of a steady seller. II Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1878–1891 When James T. Fields retired in early 1871, James R. Osgood became Stowe’s primary correspondent at the firm. He first made certain that Stowe wished to remain in the new house and, under the imprint of James R. Osgood and Co., continued to issue reprints of Uncle Tom’s Cabin based on Jewett’s stereotype plates.42 At the beginning of 1878, the company merged with Hurd and Houghton, and the new firm was named Houghton, Osgood and Co.43 The three partners, James Ripley Osgood, Henry Oscar Houghton, and George Harrison Mifflin quickly decided that after 15 years of reprints, Uncle Tom’s Cabin deserved a new edition. Jewett’s stereotype plates were old and worn after so many years of use, and H.O. Houghton was particularly keen on well-designed and beautifully manufactured books. On the other hand, even a cursory glance at the sales figures of Stowe’s works would have sufficed to convince the partners that, if any of Stowe’s works deserved a new edition, it had to be Uncle Tom’s Cabin. From the first, the publishing house resolved to issue a volume that would present the novel as both a classic and a steady seller. This objective would be achieved by the creation of an original paratext in which both author and publisher would be actively involved. Osgood asked Stowe to send him the letters from famous political or literary figures that she had received after the publication of the novel. For his part, Osgood was to write to the British Library, whose librarian had begun soon after its publication to collect British and foreign editions of the novel, in the same way as he collected editions of the Bible and of Dickens. Stowe’s intense activity on the occasion of this new edition clearly demonstrates that her relative silence on the subject of Uncle Tom’s Cabin over the previous two decades was owing to a lack of time, not interest. The new edition appeared to her as a collective undertaking, and when she wrote to remind her publisher that the copyright had to be renewed (“You will see of course to this copyright that nobody cuts in before us & takes away our birthright”), she acknowledged the shared ownership of the novel.44 Charged with writing a new introduction to the novel, Stowe immediately proceeded to send a number of letters. From Madame Belloc, one of her French translators, she requested an account of the reception of the novel in France. From Annie Fields, she desired that she send a note to Anna Leonowens, who, as a former governess at the court of Siam, might provide her with information regarding the influence of the novel there. Her son Charles, then studying in Germany, suggested 42

James R. Osgood to HBS, illegible date, Pressed Letter Book, September 1866–February 1877, MS Am 2030.2 (62), HO L. 43 Ballou, The Building of the House, pp. 249–50. 44 HBS to James Osgood, 10 March 1878, Berg Collection, New York Public Library.


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that German scholars would undertake a similar accounting for a modest sum. Finally, Stowe asked her daughter Hatty to send her the contents of a box that the writer kept under her bed, which held all the material relating to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. When she wrote Hatty in October 1878, Stowe had not yet begun to work on her introduction, even though she had promised her publisher that she would devote the summer to its composition.45 The new edition was scheduled to come out in time for the Christmas trade. The publishers deposited a copy of the title page of the new edition, which bears the date 1879, in the Library of Congress on 13 November 1878. Uncle Tom’s Cabin copyright, set to expire in 1879, was thus prolonged for 14 years. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American History Houghton, Osgood and Co. announced the new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 16 and 23 November 1878 editions of Publishers’ Weekly, then took out a full page in the Christmas number of the same journal to advertise it.46 In their full-page advertisement (Figure 4), where the title of the book dwarfs the name of its author, the Boston publishers played upon a number of arguments likely to attract potential buyers and to rejuvenate a quarter-of-a-century old novel. Nothing in the advertisement, however, reminded the reader of the subject and aim of the novel, nor of the polemic that surrounded its initial publication. The publishers touted Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a “wonderful story,” quite a surprising term when applied to a work that exposed the brutality of slavery. To some extent, the advertisement presented the American public with a novel detached from its context, a timeless and innocuous work in that it no longer appeared as an object of potential controversy. Stowe’s lengthy introduction to the new edition followed much the same strategy. In her survey of the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, she briefly mentioned some of the violent reactions of Southern readers, but most of her introduction was devoted to demonstrating the success and popularity of the novel, a theme she announced in the very first lines, by telling her reader to expect “a brief account of that book—how it came to be, how it was received in the world, and what has been its history throughout all the nations and tribes of the earth, civilized and uncivilized, into whose languages it has been translated.” The accumulation of readers’ letters and laudatory reviews reprinted in the introduction tended to downplay the polemic the novel caused. Instead, 45 HBS to Madame Belloc, undated letter, Berg Collection, New York Public Library. HBS to Annie Fields, 3 October (1878), Fields Collection, FI 3998, HL. HBS to Osgood, 26 July 1878, HM 35093, HL HBS to Hatty, October (1878), Folder 164, Beecher-Stowe Family Papers, SL. Fragment of a letter that is both undated and without an addressee but which was obviously meant for Osgood and written between March and July 1878, Katharine S. Day Collection, HBSC. 46 Publishers’ Weekly (hereafter PW), 30 November 1878. Although the title page of the book bears the date 1879, the new edition came out in time for the 1878 holiday season. It is listed in the “New Books for the Holiday Season” in the same number of PW as well as in the list of books published in 1878 issued in the 25 January 1879 number of the journal.

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an idea of consensus is generated by these numerous testimonies to the emotional power of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe’s introduction was entirely taken up by the past—the history of the novel, its inception, sources and reception—and the present was all but disregarded, only brought in to testify to the continued popularity of the novel. Yet Stowe was conscious that the South was being “redeemed” at that very time and that African Americans were gradually being deprived of the rights they had obtained during Reconstruction. She spent part of the year in Florida, where she had witnessed various schemes meant to prevent African Americans from voting.47 Nonetheless, in the introduction she deliberately chose not to mention the situation of former slaves at the end of the 1870s. This apparent lack of interest is explained in her correspondence. According to Stowe, the novel’s mission ended on the day slavery was abolished.48 In its March 1879 issue, The Atlantic Monthly devoted two columns to the new edition. The unsigned article49 paid little attention to the material aspect of the volume, focusing instead on Stowe’s introduction and the bibliography compiled by George Bullen, of the British Museum. Unlike the publishers in their advertisement, the commentator firmly replaced Stowe’s book in its context—the debate over slavery— and used this opportunity to rejoice over the tremendous changes that had taken place since the novel first came out, “[…] whatever our present sin and shame, they are virtue and honor compared with the degradation in which we lay when slavery had so perverted the national mind and heart that the one no longer found it wrong, and the other no longer felt it bad […] We may be a fraud, but we are no longer an open lie.” Slavery, it seemed, belonged to an almost forgotten past, “Wherever there was a mind to think and a heart to feel, it [Uncle Tom’s Cabin] appealed with a depth and a force which none but those who remember slavery as an actuality can understand.”50 For this new edition, therefore, author, publisher and reviewer seemed to agree that Uncle Tom’s Cabin could now be used by a new generation to celebrate the achievements of the past, but that the contemporary audience did not necessarily have to be reminded of the problems that remained. It is certainly no accident that this presentation of the novel coincides with a considerable shift in the attitude of many Americans in respect to former slaves. Even before the actual end of Reconstruction, disappointed by what they deemed the slow progress of freed men, many Radicals, 47

See HBS to Lucy Perkins, 5 December 1876, Katharine S. Day Collection, HBSC.

48 See, for example, HBS to the Duchess of Argyle, 19 February 1866, Papers of Harriet

Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318 etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa; Stowe explains her position and defends William Lloyd Garrison, then under attack for closing down The Liberator after the war, for the same reason. Stowe’s view of Reconstruction is detailed in her article “The Education of Freedmen,” published in The North American Review (vol. 128, No. 271, June 1879): 605–15. For Stowe’s redefinition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a testimony to past wrongs and a religious “comforter,” see p. 66. 49 Probably by William Dean Howells (see Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, note 5 p. 442). Howells had taken over from Fields as editor of The Atlantic Monthly in 1871. 50 “Recent Literature,” The Atlantic Montly CCLVII (March 1879): 407–8.

Figure 4


Publishers’ Weekly (30 November 1878)

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as well as Northerners in general, had “lost interest in the cause” and turned to “other crusades.”51 The evolution of American society naturally affected how Uncle Tom’s Cabin was introduced to a new audience and therefore the way contemporary readers were likely to approach the novel. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Literary Judgment When the 1879 edition came out, Stowe’s literary reputation had suffered a gradual decline, and the controversy surrounding her defense of Lady Byron had dealt the writer a heavy blow. Changing criteria of literary judgment led Stowe’s writing to be judged, in Joan Hedrick’s words, as “amateur, unprofessional and bad ‘art.’”52 In this respect, the account of Stowe’s career which precedes the catalogue inserted at the back of an 1877 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin is revealing. She is presented as a writer of romances, which are “so humorous, so exceedingly ingenious in depicting the ludicrous side of things, that they rank with the most charming stories in English literature.” Twenty-five years had elapsed since Uncle Tom’s Cabin was first published, and the Civil War had been over for more than a decade. Stowe had produced a number of works between 1852 and 1877, and would actually publish her last work, Poganuc People, in 1878. The author of the notice was therefore taking Stowe’s entire career into account when he appraised her literary output. However, this 1877 assessment of Stowe’s works is striking, for it suggests that her first novel, and the outrage it caused, were all but forgotten. Stowe’s work was deemed “charming,” which can be understood as damning with faint praise, and perhaps “feminine,” which is ironic when one remembers that in the early 1850s Stowe was charged with abandoning the proper role of her sex.53 In contrast, The Nation clearly set Uncle Tom’s Cabin apart from her later works, which it criticized in particularly scathing terms. A review of Pink and White Tyranny: A Society Novel (1871), for instance, read, “We object to Mrs. Stowe’s representation not only on account of its uselessness as an agent of moral reform, but its falsity as a delineation of American Society.” Of My Wife and I; or, Harry Henderson’s History (1872), the best that could be said, according to The Nation, was that “The book is not really a novel, but a sort of guide to young men with slender incomes who are wearied of boarding-house life.” Poganuc People (1878) was also harshly criticized: “A writer

51 Kenneth M. Stampp, “The Tragic Legend of Reconstruction,” in Stampp and Litwack (eds), Reconstruction: An Anthology of Revisionist Writings (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1969), pp. 3–21. 52 Joan Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe, p. ix. 53 For the sake of comparison, another catalogue in an 1879 edition of Stowe’s novel announces the publication of The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James and prints an extract from a New York Tribune review, in which the following phrases can be found: “seriousness of intention … scope and mastery of material … sustained and spontaneous dignity and grace of style … clear conception and accurate delineation of character.” The comparison clearly evokes gendered bias.


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whose words have stirred a nation should be hindered, we think, by a sense of fitness from publishing these cheerful, jog-trot, sweet cider sort of lucubrations.”54 The 1879 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin—Stowe’s only work to be awarded the honor of a holiday edition—also emphasized the very special position occupied by Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Stowe’s oeuvre, while the paratextual accompaniment clearly defined the novel as a classic, a status first granted by the British shortly after the original publication of the novel. In 1858, Thomas Watts, of the British Museum Library described Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a unique phenomenon in publishing history: Even the masterpieces of Scott and Dickens have never been translated into Welsh, while the American novel has found its way in various shapes into the language of the ancient Britons […] It is customary in all great libraries to make a collection of the versions of the Scriptures in various languages and dialects, to serve among other purposes for those of philological study. I suggested to Mr Panizzi, then at the head of the Printed Books department, that in this point of view it would be of considerable interest to collect the versions of Uncle Tom.

He then went on to explain that the British Library, which already collected editions and translations of Shakespeare and Dickens, had followed his advice and begun to accumulate versions of Stowe’s novel.55 The collection served as a basis for the bibliography compiled by George Bullen for the 1879 edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Bullen introduced the list with a few words that placed Shakespeare, Dickens, and Stowe together: all had been deemed worthy of collections in the British institution.56 This obviously raised Stowe’s novel to the level of the greatest in world literature, a fact which could not be lost on the reader of the 1879 edition, and which was further emphasized by the letters and reviews (signed by Dickens and George Sand, among others) included in Stowe’s introduction. The Atlantic Monthly review of the new edition commended Uncle Tom’s Cabin “to those who lament that we have no American novel.” A decade after John William de Forest had nominated Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the “Great American novel” on the merits of its “national breadth,”57 the Atlantic commentator judged that, although the work contained some “fearful lapses” (“False colors in character … errors of 54

Extracts from reviews reprinted in John Foster Kirk, A Supplement to Allibone’s Critical Dictionary of English Literature and British and American Authors, vol. II (Philadelphia, J.B. Lippincott, 1908), pp. 1398–9. 55 Letter from Thomas Watts to Sampson Low, 16 December 1858. Sampson Low Authograph Book No. 2, Book History Archive, Open University, Milton Keynes, England. 56 Americans took longer to follow suit. A year before the new edition was issued, Justin Winsor, then superintendent of the Boston Public Library, had the Boston Library staff compile a list of the “entries in the British Museum Catalog relating to Uncle Tom’s Cabin… for a purpose of forming a collection here of the same books and constituting a unique collection for philological study” (1877 manuscript, Rare Books Department, Boston Public Library). 57 Amy Kaplan, “Nation, Region, and Empire,” in Emory Elliott (ed.), The Columbia History of the American Novel (Columbia University Press, 1991), pp. 240–66.

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taste”), here was “an American novel as great in its way as Longfellow’s Evangeline or Hawthorne’s Scarlet Letter, and probably greater, upon the whole, than any other novel of our time.”58 A quarter of a century after its first publication in book format, Stowe’s first novel appeared as a masterpiece whose flaws did not prevent it from aspiring to the honor of being THE American novel. The New Edition; The Strange Case of the New/Old Illustrations Various selling points of the new edition were neatly summarized in the article “The Holiday Gift Books” in the Christmas number of Publishers’ Weekly: “A new red-line edition of Mrs. Stowe’s world-famous novel, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ has over a hundred illustrations to commend it to the holiday buyer, besides a new historical preface by Mrs. Stowe, and an interesting bibliography of the work, in its hundreds of editions and translations, by Mr. George Bullen of the British Museum.”59 The volume, printed by the Riverside Press, was quite large, heavy and luxurious, with gilt edges.60 On the cloth cover, below a circular vignette representing Uncle Tom seated in front of Eva to whom he was dictating a letter, a dove and a broken chain spoke to the religious content of the book as well as to its anti-slavery stance, while at the same time reminding the reader that slavery belonged to the past. The cloth cover editions came in various colors, including green, light and dark brown, as well as purple. The first edition was priced at $3.50, and later reprints offered more varied bindings, such as morocco at $8 and half-calf at $6.50.61 For the first time in the publishing history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the United States, most mistakes had been corrected and chapter 8 received its proper heading, “Eliza’s Escape”; only the “I got took in in” in Chapter 31 remained unchanged. A great deal of meticulous care had evidently gone into this edition, which, as has already been noted, entirely renewed the paratextual material, with two important exceptions: 1) Stowe’s preface to the first American edition was included, along with her new introduction; and 2) the illustrations were not actually new, even if they were so to the American public. As a matter of fact, the frontispiece, the title-page vignette and most of the illustrations originally belonged to an 1853 London edition published by Nathaniel Cooke.62 No documents remain that might account for the choice of 58

The Atlantic Monthly, March 1879: 407–408. Of course, the monthly was published by the firm which also issued Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 59 Unsigned article, PW, 30 November 1878: 617. 60 According to W.S. Tryon, the Civil War created a class of nouveaux riches prepared to buy expensive books precisely because they were—and looked—expensive. For Tryon, the Red Line Editions, initially launched by Fields for that new public, were vulgar, the very antithesis of the tasteful brown covers that had become a distinctive house style (Parnassus Corner, pp. 294–5). 61 Catalogue on the back cover of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, undated (1882 or 1883), reprint of Jewett’s cheap edition, paper covers. 62 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life among the Lowly, A Tale of Slave Life in America, with Above One Hundred and Fifty Illustrations, Drawn by George Thomas, Esq., and T.R. Macquoid, Esq.,


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English engravings to illustrate an American novel. When Stowe had written Fields in 1870 to suggest a new illustrated edition, she had advanced the possession of the illustrations as an enticement to the publisher, who would not be required to pay for new ones. She was obviously referring to Jewett’s profusely-illustrated one-volume edition, since the mere six engravings of the initial two-volume edition would hardly have qualified for a new illustrated edition. Yet, the plates of Jewett’s illustrated onevolume edition were never used again; there is a distinct possibility that they might have disappeared in November 1872, when a fire broke out in the business district of Boston, destroying Osgood’s warehouse, and melting “the plates used for printing expensive illustrations.”63 Whatever the reason, Houghton, Osgood and Co. bought the copyright to the illustrations of the Cooke edition for 10 guineas, which had been negotiated by Nicholas Trübner, their London agent.64 Of all the English editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin published between 1852 and 1878, Cooke’s was by far the most lavishly illustrated, containing about three times as many engravings as most other English editions. Given their emphasis on domestic happiness shattered by slavery, the illustrations by George Thomas and Thomas Robert Macquoid were in keeping with Stowe’s denunciation of the brutality of an institution that separated families. They were also more faithful to the text of the novel than Billings’s engravings for Jewett’s one-volume edition, since they showed Tom as a young man (Figure 5). Thomas and Macquoid’s illustrations boasted the additional advantage of being devoid of caricature, unlike other English engravings, most notably those of George Cruikshank. Stowe may have become acquainted with Thomas and Macquoid’s work during one of her stays in England; she may even have owned a copy of the English edition. Osgood may also have checked the collection of English editions at the British Museum during his trip to Europe in summer 1878 when he attended the French “Exposition.” In any event, when Stowe wrote Osgood in July 1878, telling him, “I think the London arrangements perfect,” she might well have been referring to the choice of illustrations for the new edition.65 If the Boston publishing house used most of the illustrations from the Cooke edition, they nevertheless hired an artist to design a number of illuminated letters and tailpieces, as well as a few small vignettes printed in the center of the otherwise blank pages that separate the various paratextual elements at the beginning of the volume: and Engraved by William Thomas, Esq.; London, Nathaniel Cooke, 1853. For an account of George and William Thomas, see Sutherland, The Stanford Companion to Victorian Fiction, p. 626. 63 John Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 2 (New York, R.R. Bowker, 1975), p. 265. Also see Ballou, The Building of the House, pp. 196–201. 64 Strangely enough, the rights were ceded after the illustrations had been used. Trübner bought them from a certain Darton—his identity remains obscure—for 10 guineas in January 1879. In March 1879, he subsequently turned over the rights for the same amount to Houghton, Osgood. bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 65 For Osgood’s trip to Europe, see Ballou, The Building of the House, chapter 10. HBS to James R. Osgood, 26 July 1878, HM 35093, HL.

Figure 5

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Illustrated Edition (Houghton, Mifflin, 1883). Engraving after a drawing by George Thomas/T.R. Macquoid. Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center


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a book, flowers, a basket filled with eggs. These essentially decorative elements underline another aspect of the book, that is its suitability as a coffee-table book, meant to be leafed through and admired. The “Holiday Edition” appeared in a less expensive and smaller two-dollar version in February 1879, without the gilt edges or the red border. It was also available to English buyers, since Routledge (London) issued the “Holiday Edition” under its own imprint in 1880, only modifying the title page to accommodate the change in publishers and to remove the subtitle, as was standard practice in British editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.66 Thomas and Macquoid’s illustrations subsequently reappeared in an otherwise wholly different edition brought out in London by John Hogg in 1891.67 Much later, some of the engravings were reprinted in the Reader’s Digest 1991 edition of Stowe’s novel. Between these respective editions, the portrait of Tom admiring the baby (Figure 3) that served as a frontispiece to both Cooke’s and Houghton, Osgood’s editions, was imitated by Jenny Nystrom-Stoopendaal in a Swedish-language edition published in Sweden in 1895, issued in English by Cassell and Co. (London, 1896, reprinted at least twice, in 1899 and 1900, respectively) and issued under different American imprints around 1897 (Boston, George M. Smith, Chicago, International Publishing Company, and so forth).68 The 1885 “Popular Edition” In 1880, Osgood withdrew from the publishing house which was renamed Houghton, Mifflin and Co.69 The new company informed Stowe that they had “succeeded Houghton, Osgood and Co. and assumed their liabilities and contracts with authors.” Perhaps to help make the change more palatable, they enclosed a check for $600.86 “on account of copyright.”70 Houghton, Mifflin had retained the plates of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and continued to reprint both the “Holiday Edition” and its cheaper version until sales figures began to flag in 1884, prompting them to issue a new edition in 1885. Priced at one dollar, this “Popular Edition” was advertised together with a similar edition of The Scarlet Letter, in Publisher’s Weekly dated 29 August 1885 (Figure 6). Although both books were to come out in the same format and at the same price, the publishers devoted little space to Hawthorne’s classic, merely reminding readers of the greatness of the novel and 66 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, New Edition, with Illustrations by George H. Thomas and a Bibliography of the Work by George Bullen (London, George Routledge, 1880). In the same way, the house of Routledge issued in England and under its own imprint a luxury edition of Emerson’s works published by Houghton, Mifflin in the 1880s: see Ballou, The Building of the House, p. 313. 67 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Life among the Lowly, A Tale of Slave Life in America (London, John Hogg, 1891). 68 See Appendix 2. 69 On the withdrawal of Osgood and the ensuing conflict between the former partners, see Ballou, The Building of the House, Chapter 11. 70 Houghton, Mifflin to HBS, 1 May 1880, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L.

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predicting a “universal circulation” for so fine an edition at such a low cost.71 Uncle Tom’s Cabin seemed to require more of an effort, as if its literary standing were not quite so certain. Unlike the advertisement for the 1878 edition, this one placed the novel in its historical context. Because slavery was increasingly becoming a thing of the past, one central problem in the marketing of the book was how to convince readers to take an interest in the novel’s subject. The great attractions of the novel, according to the advertisement, were the narrative itself, the good that came out of it, and its popularity. In other words, the advertisement promised a good read, combined with moral improvement and the satisfying certainty that countless other readers had already loved the book. Since the target audience was a popular one, the price of the volume was emphasized; the reference to the introduction promised the reader interesting information—direct from the author herself—without, however, putting him/her off by adding material that might be regarded as too erudite. The “Popular Edition,” issued in September 1885, was much thinner and lighter than the previous two editions. Easier to carry, it was bound in cloth of various colors, and bore a circular vignette on the front cover showing Eva looking over the shoulder of Uncle Tom who was in the process of writing a letter.72 The type used, while relatively small, was quite legible. Only one illustration graced the inside of the volume, with Thomas’s portrait of Tom admiring the baby used as a frontispiece. The three editions—“Holiday Edition” and its cheaper version, and “Popular Edition”—were reprinted almost every year in the 1880s. As Jewett had done much earlier, the publishing house intended to provide a diverse audience with editions that corresponded to their purchasing power and used advertising arguments adapted to each segment of the population; nevertheless, unlike Jewett, they never compromised over the quality of their product, for the layout and typography remained neat and legible whatever the price of the volume. Strangely enough, however, Houghton, Mifflin were to use the plates of Jewett’s inexpensive edition for an ultimate run in the early 1880s. In a contract signed on 23 August 1882, Houghton, Mifflin committed themselves to manufacturing and publishing a “special edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in pamphlet double-column octavo … adding thereto four illustrations to be inserted as four separate leaves of tinted paper.” The right to sell this edition was vested in Thomas C. Houghton and J. Simmons, who agreed to pay in advance and in cash quantities of “not less than one thousand at a time” for the volumes to be sold exclusively in connection with “their dramatic representations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Each pamphlet edition was to be priced at 25 cents, a net profit of 3 cents per copy for the two men who bought them 22 cents from the publisher. The contract had a limited duration, expiring on 1 June 71 Unlike Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Scarlet Letter was usually issued as one of Hawthorne’s collected works. In other words, Hawthorne’s entire works were canonized by the publishing house, while Stowe’s first novel was handled differently from the rest of her work. See Winship, “Hawthorne and the ‘Scribbling Women.’” 72 It was therefore more faithful to the text (the scene is described in Chapter 19 of the novel) than the vignette ornamenting the front cover of the holiday edition.

Figure 6


Publishers’ Weekly (29 August 1885)

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1883, and it expressly stipulated that no sales were to be made to the book trade.73 For this very cheap edition, Houghton, Mifflin used Jewett’s old plates without correcting the mistakes. They did, however, make the edition more attractive by improving the layout of the text on the page, by adding four of the original illustrations designed by Billings for Jewett’s two-volume edition, and by replacing the paper cover and title page, which now bore the imprint of Houghton, Mifflin. The ubiquitous engraving of Tom admiring the baby was also featured on the cover. In 1884, Henry O. Houghton wrote to Stowe with a proposal that intimated the high regard Stowe enjoyed in her publishers’ eyes: “It was in my mind to suggest to you a uniform edition of your books, similar to the edition we have recently made of Hawthorne and Emerson. It occurred to me that you could add prefaces and notes to some of the volumes, which would make them more valuable, and that a uniform edition which should be made now, with an idea of being permanent, might be a pecuniary advantage to you, and eventually repay us. It seems to me also that your works deserve this recognition.”74 While putting Stowe’s works on a par with those of the great New England male writers, Houghton’s letter neatly summarized the financial advantages and canon-making dimension of collected editions at a time when such collections were entering their “golden age.”75 The project of a collected edition, coming over 25 years after Stowe had first mentioned it to Phillips, Sampson and Co., was again to be delayed owing to the fact Houghton, Mifflin did not own the rights to all of Stowe’s works. Potential buyers of the complete works of Stowe would have to wait until 1896 to do so. Meanwhile, the publishers continued to pay closer attention to her first novel than to her other works. Catalogues of the late 1880s offered Uncle Tom’s Cabin in three editions, whereas her other novels and stories were issued in single editions at prices ranging from 50 cents to $1.50. Stowe’s first novel enjoyed the same variety of editions as Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, whereas Maria Cummins’s 1850s sentimental bestseller, The Lamplighter, also initially published by Jewett, was available in Houghton, Mifflin’s catalogue, but only in two cheap editions, priced at 25 cents and $1, respectively. Contracts, Sales Figures and Royalties: 1878–1891 The contract for the “Holiday Edition” was signed in November 1878; the publishers were to pay for the manufacture of stereotype or electrotype plates and give Stowe a set amount of 20 cents per copy, whatever the bindings, and therefore the price of

73 Contract signed on 23 August 1882, Copyright Contracts, uncatalogued, Box 38, Hoskin-Howe, Thomas C. Houghton file, HO L. 74 H.O. Houghton to HBS, 4 August 1884, Henry O. Houghton Pressed Letter Book, Ms Am 2030 (185), HO L. 75 On the proliferation of collected editions in the last decades of the nineteenth century, see Andrew Nash, Introduction to The Culture of Collected Editions, pp. 6–7.


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the volume, with no copies exempt from royalty. Accounts were to be settled twice a year, in May and November.76 The sum of 20 cents per copy seems quite low, at least in respect to the “Holiday Edition,” priced at $3.50, since it awarded Stowe less than 10 per cent on the retail price of the volumes. No correspondence on the subject is extant; the size of the royalty might have been negotiated during a meeting in the Boston offices of the publishing firm, and the publishers may have argued theirs was a costly edition to manufacture. They may also have signified their intention to issue a $2 edition shortly thereafter. The author’s royalty would then have increased to 10 per cent of the retail price, the percentage commonly offered by the firm.77 In 1878, therefore, Stowe agreed to a percentage similar to the one Calvin had accepted from Jewett and that she had later greatly objected to in angry letters to her first publisher. Yet at the beginning of the same year, the contract that she had signed with the New York publishers Fords, Howard and Hulbert for the new edition of four of her 1870s works (My Wife and I, We and our Neighbors, Betty’s Bright Idea and Footsteps of the Master) stipulated that Stowe would receive half profits on the sales of the works, after “deducting the necessary expenses of manufacture and sale.” The plates would be jointly owned by author and publisher.78 The contract for the new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin probably reflected Houghton, Osgood’s policies in the matter of copyright rather than Stowe’s wishes. The writer was to accept the same royalty percentage for the “Popular Edition” brought out in 1885. She did so seemingly without second thoughts: “I should be willing, as you propose, to accept a royalty of ten per cent on the retail price of all copies of Uncle Tom which you sell for $1.”79 She also accepted a 10 per cent royalty (amounting to 2 cents per copy) on the “theater” edition.80 She occasionally agreed to an even lower percentage. Such was the case, for instance, when in 1885 Houghton, Mifflin explained that they had been asked “to quote a price for an edition of one or two thousand copies of the new edition of Uncle Tom to a London publisher,” that the figure had to be very low if they were to secure the order, and suggested a royalty of 5 per cent. Stowe answered the very next day, accepting the proposal but insisting that she did so only on “copies sold to the English market.”81 Stowe sometimes waived her copyright entirely to have her works sent to an exhibition or given to a library.82 When she did so, her letters to 76 Memorandum of agreement HB Stowe-Houghton, Osgood and Co., 21 November 1878, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 77 See Ballou, The Building of the House, p. 289 and note 27, p. 608. 78 Contract signed on 7 January 1878, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 79 HBS to Houghton, 13 January 1885, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 80 Memorandum of agreement H.B. Stowe-Houghton, Mifflin, 11 September 1882, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 81 Houghton, Mifflin to HBS, (16?) December 1885; HBS to Houghton, 17 December 1885, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 82 In a message scribbled on the back of a call for works by women writers to be exhibited at the New Orleans Exposition, December 1884–May 1885, Stowe noted, “It would, I think

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the publishers expressed a mixture of generosity and sound business sense, for such gifts were of course an effective way of promoting her works. Since theirs were truly new editions, as opposed to the reprints brought out before 1879, Houghton, Osgood and Co. sent out 250 copies of the “Holiday Edition” for review in periodicals and newspapers in late 1878, followed by approximately 50 copies of the cheaper version published in February 1879. The “Holiday Edition” enjoyed brisk sales in the six months following its publication (2,152 copies were sold by 1 May 1879), after which the figure declined to 200 to 300 copies a year until 1883, then hovered around 150 copies a year until 1890. The $2 version proved to be very popular, selling between 3,000 and 4,000 copies a year in the first two years; unlike the “Holiday Edition,” the cheaper version saw a steady increase in the number of copies sold, and almost 12,000 copies found purchasers in 1883. The following year marked a turning point, however, with the sale of slightly over 6,500 copies. The publishers’ swift reaction, launching the “Popular Edition,” proved successful since it sold over 30,000 copies in 1885—showing that indeed a market existed. But sales declined in the following years; when, in 1891, the sales figures of the “Popular Edition” fell below 20,000 copies, Houghton, Mifflin and Co. launched a new offensive and brought out several new editions. Unsurprisingly, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was Stowe’s chief source of copyright income in the 1880s, with royalties averaging $2,300 a year between 1881 and 1885, and $2,500 per year from 1886 to 1891. During the latter period, the royalties she received for all her other works published by the Boston company amounted to around $1,000 a year.83 Stowe’s first novel definitely stood apart from her other works, in the eyes of critics, publishers, and the public. III Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1892–1893: New Editions and the Copyright Issue The copyright of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to expire in May 1893, and Houghton, Mifflin decided to offer the American public a series of different editions, from the cheapest to the most luxurious and lavishly illustrated, in order to prepare for the competition they expected to face as soon as the copyright expired.84 They began their campaign by bringing out the most impressive and costliest of three new editions be for our mutual interest.” bMs Am 1925 (1723) HO L. She expressed the same feeling when asked to donate her works to a circulating library in Saratoga Springs; in a letter dated 15 April 1885, she told Houghton, “It may even as policy be a good plan ….” bMs Am 1925 (1723) HO L. The following year, she made the same request of Houghton in answer to an unspecified demand, adding, “Even in a business point of view you may find it an advantage to have one book in Washington Territory.” HBS to Houghton, 9 March 1886. bMs Am 1925 (1723) HO L. 83 Ms Am 2030 (31); bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 84 They used the same strategies in the case of James Russell Lowell, as well as for The Scarlet Letter: see Ballou, The Building of the House, pp. 382–3, and Winship, “Hawthorne and the ‘Scribbling Women’”: 9.


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(“New Holiday Edition,” 1891), then two inexpensive editions (“Universal Edition,” 1892, and “Brunswick Edition” 1893). Meanwhile, the publishers’ older editions were regularly reprinted, and the 1885 “Popular Edition” was reissued in 1892 as the “New Popular Edition.” Now priced at $1.50, it included eight of the illustrations by George Thomas and T.R. Macquoid used in the 1879 “Holiday Edition.” Each edition targeted a particular segment of the population and was marketed accordingly. When Houghton, Mifflin advertised their first new edition, which was to come out in late 1891 and was appropriately dubbed “New Holiday Edition,” they made it clear that their target audience was the upper brackets of the population. The advertisements printed in Publishers’ Weekly of 14 November and 5 December 1891 described a two-volume edition that could be purchased in a limited large-paper edition, “with unique full ooze calf binding” for $10 or a regular edition bound in Persian silk for $4. The blurb extolled the beauty of the book, while remaining discrete about its contents, save for a generic definition that resembled a new subtitle, “A Story of Slavery,” (Publishers’ Weekly, 14 November) and a brief reminder that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “a world-famous story” (Publishers’ Weekly, 5 December). The novel was evidently too well-known to require further commentary. The volumes were published in December 1891, with a title page dated 1892. They included Stowe’s introduction to the 1879 edition as well as her preface to the 1852 edition. The frontispieces consisted of two steel portraits of the author, as a young woman in volume 1, and at age 73 in volume 2. All other illustrations were the work of Edward Windsor Kemble, who had designed over 120 text illustrations, in addition to 16 full-page photogravures. Stowe played no role in the selection of an illustrator; in the late 1880s, her failing health caused her to transfer full power of attorney to her son Charles and require her publishers to refer all “matters of business” to him.85 In their advertisement, the publishers had made much of their choice of Kemble to illustrate the new edition: “It must be regarded as a very fortunate circumstance that Mr. Kemble could be secured to illustrate it, for he has no superior in genius for depicting the Southern negro of the old slave days, the pathos of his experience, and the humor with which he lightened it.”86 Hiring Kemble was part of the publishers’ strategy, as a famous artist guaranteed sales. Indeed, by 1892, Edward Windsor Kemble had achieved a considerable reputation both as a cartoonist for periodicals and as a book illustrator. After a first commission for Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Kemble designed illustrations for books by Joel Chandler Harris, Thomas Nelson Page, and George Washington Cable, among others. He became, as he himself was later to put it, “a delineator of the South, the Negro being my specialty.”87 In contrast to his work for Huckleberry Finn, Kemble’s illustrations for Stowe’s novel 85 HBS to Houghton, Mifflin, 29 December 1887 and 23 November 1891. bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 86 PW, 5 December 1891: 976. 87 Edward Windsor Kemble, “Illustrating Huckleberry Finn,” The Colophon, February 1930: 44–5.

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provided a commentary almost entirely devoid of caricature and irony. Most portraits of the characters in the novel depicted full-blown individuals. Tom was portrayed in two photogravures, as a young man praying next to his children in volume 1 (Figure 7), and as a much older, well-dressed and dignified man in volume 2. Apart from a single photogravure that showed Scipio hiding from his pursuers, Kemble eschewed all sensationalism. Scipio’s face bore a look of terror but his pursuers were absent from the picture. Whether in the full-page photogravures or the text illustrations, Kemble emphasized daily life in times of slavery without stressing the brutality of the institution, even if some of the pictures do hint at hard and tedious work unrelieved by any hope for a better future. The captions, drawn from the text or referring to a generic aspect of life under slavery (such as “Field Hands Coming In,” or “A Gang Driver”) seemed to mirror the descriptions of the novel given in the publishers’ advertisement, “A Story of Slavery,” while toning down the violence contained in the text.88 The abundance of illustrations, together with the fine printing and binding work, reflected Houghton’s love for fine bookmaking as well as his belief that there existed a lucrative market for limited editions.89 As Publishers’ Weekly noted, limited editions were successful because they played on the allure of rare objects, “which lies deep in human nature,” and which transformed rarity itself into “an element of commercial value.”90 Because the new edition was a sizeable investment, which could only be justified in the case of classics and steady sellers, the limited edition put Uncle Tom’s Cabin on a par with works by Hawthorne, Longfellow, and Emerson, three Houghton, Mifflin authors who shared the same privilege. Hardly a few months after the “New Holiday Edition” came out, Houghton, Mifflin published a “Universal Edition” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, priced at 25 cents in paper and 50 cents in cloth. On 13 February 1892, Publishers’ Weekly commented wryly that the edition was called “universal,” “with the expectation, doubtless, that there will be so general a demand for it on account of its low price that it may fitly bear this name.” In the same number, an advertisement by Houghton, Mifflin touted the low price of the edition as well as the extremely high initial print run, 160,000 copies. The “popular” target audience was signalled by the large bold types used in the advertisement, very different from the sedate typography used in the advertisement for the “New Holiday Edition.” The pocket-sized edition included Stowe’s preface to the 1852 edition, printed in one column, and followed by the text in two columns. The print was small but legible, and the single illustration, featuring “an engaging negro’s 88

On this point, see my “Edward Windsor Kemble et les Africains-Américains: illustrations de Adventures of Huckleberry Finn et Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” in Hélène Le DantecLowry and Arlette Frund (eds), Ecritures de l’histoire africaine-américaine, Annales du Monde Anglophone No. 18 (Paris, L’Harmattan, 2003): 115–29. For an alternative interpretation of Kemble’s illustrations, see Barbara Hochman, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin at the World’s Columbian Exposition, 1893,” in Libraries and Culture, 41/1 (2006): 82–108. 89 Ballou, The Building of the House, p. 309. 90 G.W. Smalley, “Large Paper Editions,” reprinted from the New York Tribune, PW, 16 September 1893: 334–5.


Figure 7

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin, New Holiday Edition (Houghton, Mifflin, 1892). Photogravure by Edward Windsor Kemble (from my own collection, a gift from Geneviève and Michel Fabre)

face” on the paper cover (Figure 8), was deemed by Publisher’s Weekly “especially suitable for this book.”91 In December 1892, Houghton, Mifflin wrote to Charles E. Stowe that they were considering yet another edition, which they dubbed a “Little Classic”; they had already issued The Scarlet Letter in a similar edition, now selling for 35 cents. The problem, however, was the length of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, which made it twice as expensive to manufacture as Hawthorne’s novel. The publishers were ready to offer the new edition at a retail price of 45 cents, which competing editions after the expiration of the novel’s copyright might force them to bring down to 40 cents. The publishers clearly outlined their strategy in the letter: they hoped for a financial return for the house as well as the writer; they also meant to discourage reprinters, protect their PW, 13 February 1892: 318 and 306. The work was listed in the Weekly Record of New Publications in PW dated 2 April 1892. 91

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higher-priced editions and prepare for the flood of editions certain to come out after the copyright expired. According to them, “with our popular dollar edition, and two illustrated editions, besides the Universal and this Little Classic, on hand, we shall certainly have a sufficient variety of styles to offer to the public.”92 When it was published in 1893, the “Little Classic” was finally priced at 30 cents. A small one-volume edition, it featured pretty red and white covers protected by a dust jacket in the same colors. It was called “Brunswick Edition,” after the Maine town where most of the novel was written.93 The only illustration in the book was on the title page, an engraving of Stowe’s house in Brunswick. The preface to the 1852 edition was the only element of authorial paratext included in the volume. Once again, the book had been carefully manufactured. By the time the copyright of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was due to expire, Houghton, Mifflin seemed ready to face rival publishers. They had indeed targeted as wide an audience as possible. Bibliophiles had a choice between the one-volume 1879 “Holiday Edition” illustrated by Thomas, whose price had been brought down to $3, and the $4 two-volume “New Holiday Edition” illustrated by Kemble. The middle-class could afford the cheaper version of the 1879 “Holiday Edition,” whose initial price of $2 had been reduced to $1.50. The “New Popular Edition” could be acquired for $1 in cloth and half that price in paper covers. And finally, aimed at what Jewett would have called “the masses,” the “Universal Edition” and the “Brunswick Edition” cost between 25 cents and 50 cents. These carefully crafted strategies designed to ward off competition were, however, dealt a heavy blow in the spring of 1892. The Copyright Issue On 1 March 1892, The National Advertiser (New York), exposed “a curious case of slip-shod business methods” that had just “come to light in the Librarian’s office at Washington.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, it stated, “one of the most profitable books ever published in the United States was not, and had never been, legally copyrighted.” According to the article, the novel had not been copyrighted when it appeared as a serial in The National Era, which invalidated the copyright of the novel in book format deposited by the publisher, whom the journalist mistakenly identified as Houghton, Mifflin. In any case, the initial copyright, if valid, would have expired in 1880; the author or her representatives had failed to renew it and, as a result, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had since then been “open to the world.”94

92

Houghton, Mifflin to Charles E. Stowe, 16 December 1892, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 93 Houghton, Mifflin also issued “Salem” editions of Hawthorne, and “Portland” editions of Longfellow: PW, 22 April 1893: 649. 94 The National Advertiser (subtitled “A Newspaper for Advertisers”), New York, 3/12 (1 March 1892): 227. The article and all the details regarding the affair are consigned in an exchange of correspondence and telegrams now in the Houghton Library: bMs Am 2346 (2725).

Figure 8


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Front Cover, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Riverside Paper Series (Houghton, Mifflin, 1892). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

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What followed this discovery—which must have struck like a thunderbolt as far as the Boston publishers were concerned—reads almost like a thriller. The partners took some time to consider the best course of action before sending a letter to A.R. Spofford, “Librarian of Congress.” They explained that they had indeed renewed the copyright for 14 years in 1878, and had never questioned the validity of the original copyright. All the chapters of the serial bore a copyright note in the Era, save Chapters 12, 13 and 14, which had apparently suffered from an oversight on the printer’s part. Knowing the truth was of vital import to the publishers, in order that “we may take prompt measures to defend ourselves if any piratical publisher should assume the statements in this article to be correct and attempt to take advantage of the supposed situation.” Spofford was instructed to send a telegram bearing the words “All regular” if the copyright had been entered properly. There was no need, the publishers told him, to explicitly name the book.95 There must have been a great deal of relief in the Boston publishing house when a telegram bearing those words arrived the very next day.96 The publishers wrote a note of thanks to Spofford and requested more particulars about the initial copyright deposit: had it been effected by Bailey or Stowe, in Maine or in Washington?97 About the same time, the publishers decided to go one step further and, in an abundance of caution, they dispatched an emissary to the Library of Congress. The first report of their “agent,” A.S. Wheeler, arrived in the guise of a coded telegram, which explained that the copyright had been deposited in Stowe’s name in Maine on 12 May 1851; the copyright wasn’t quite correct, however, since no copy of The National Era had been deposited. However, the novel’s 1852 copyright was perfectly valid and so was its 1878 renewal.98 A.S. Wheeler, evidently impressed with the importance of his mission, detailed its circumstances in a subsequent letter, and described his meeting with Spofford. Both men had spoken in low tones and Wheeler was confident that they had not attracted attention. Spofford assured Wheeler that none of his clerks would volunteer information without his assent. The librarian also had some interesting information to impart: over the last few months, two people had enquired into Uncle Tom’s Cabin; one was a New York lawyer but Spofford was unsure what he might have found; the second was J.S. Ogilvie, a representative of the US Book Company, who, the librarian believed, consulted the copyright records for Massachusetts and the District of Columbia and, failing to find an entry for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, jumped to the conclusion that none such existed.99 According to the librarian, Ogilvie was the inspiration for the Advertiser article. 95

Houghton, Mifflin to A.R. Spofford, 16 March 1892. Telegram from A.R. Spofford to Houghton, Mifflin, 17 March 1892. 97 Houghton, Mifflin to A.R. Spofford, 19 March 1892. 98 A.S. Wheeler to Houghton, Mifflin, the encrypted text is decoded on the same telegram, dated 23 March 1892. 99 A.S. Wheeler to Houghton, Mifflin, 23 March 1892. The US Book Company published very cheap books between 1891 and 1893, when it went bankrupt. See Frank L. Schick, The Paperbound Book in America: The History of Paperbacks and Their American Background 96


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The dispatch of an “agent” and all the secrecy might seem an over-reaction on the part of the publishers. Yet the concern can easily be understood in light of the financial stakes involved. The article appeared hardly three months after the costly “New Holiday Edition” was issued and at about the same time as the “Universal Edition” was to come out, with its huge first printing. Had The National Advertiser’s information proved true, other American publishers—especially those who issued cheap books—could have brought out rival editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and therefore literally “killed” the Houghton, Mifflin editions of the novel, while dismantling the careful strategy of the Boston house in respect to Stowe’s novel. The problem, however, was not entirely solved. Three of the installments in The National Era lacked a copyright mention, the weekly had not been deposited and only one copy of the novel in book format had been deposited by Jewett rather than the two required by law. According to Spofford, the validity of the copyright would in that case hinge on a court decision. Following the advice of Spofford and the company’s lawyers, Houghton, Mifflin wrote a highly indignant letter to The National Advertiser, upbraiding the paper for getting its facts wrong and encouraging “those piratically disposed to rush into the market with cheap and unauthorized editions.” The publishers enclosed a retractation to be published by the paper. In return, the paper demanded to see a copy of the entries. Houghton, Mifflin was reluctant to send the copies: they would have preferred to know that the copyright was perfectly valid and believed an organization was at work behind the whole business. At the same time, action had to be taken fast. By the end of April, the sales of Uncle Tom’s Cabin had been adversely affected. Even if no pirated edition had yet come out, the trade was watching for cheap reprints and did not buy Houghton, Mifflin’s editions. One of Houghton, Mifflin’s letters bore a ring of true panic: “this is a very serious matter to us, as it is stopping the sale of the [sic] Uncle Tom.” The publishers again took up the idea of a conspiracy initiated by rival publishers, whose object was to discourage the trade from buying the copyrighted editions in order to “secure a good market for their editions when they reprint on the expiration of our copyright—the very thing we wish to prevent.”100 The company’s lawyer advised against a suit, which would force the publishers to produce the flawed entries. The solution finally adopted consisted in the publication of a text signed Houghton, Mifflin which threatened that any publisher or distributor of unauthorized editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin would immediately be sued, and called upon the moral sense of bookmen, on behalf of Stowe, “whose chief income is derived from ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’”101 Houghton, Mifflin had been assured by their (New York, R.R. Bowker, 1958), p. 58. The company would obviously have been eager to publish Uncle Tom’s Cabin, further evidence that there was a market for the book. 100 Houghton, Mifflin to The National Advertiser, 24 March 1892; The National Advertiser to Houghton, Mifflin, 26 March 1892. Houghton, Mifflin to Charles C. Beaman (a lawyer), 23 April 1892 (two letters sent the same day). 101 A similar note had been published in PW, 16 April 1892: 602. “A Card to the Trade,” undated.

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lawyers that even if the serial had not been properly copyrighted, the book’s copyright could not be faulted. The publishers would therefore have no problem taking legal action against publishers of pirated editions.102 Fortunately for the Boston company, no lawsuit was necessitated by the appearance of pirated editions, or their lawyers might have been proved wrong. In the late 1890s, in a similar case, the US Supreme Court decided that failure to copyright the installments of a serial in a periodical invalidated the copyright of the work in book form.103 The National Advertiser did have a point, after all. Sales Figures, Contracts and Royalties, 1892–1897 Houghton, Mifflin had issued 250 copies of the limited large-paper edition; most of them sold during the first year, with the remainder selling over the next two years. Of the regular version of the “New Holiday Edition,” illustrated by Kemble, 2,000 copies were sold in 1892, and the sales figures then plummeted to around 100 copies the following year. The old “Holiday Edition” illustrated by Thomas achieved modest sales, slightly less than 100 copies a year. Its cheaper version, on the other hand, attracted an average 1,000 buyers a year between 1891 and 1893. The “Popular Edition” did very well, with almost 19,000 copies in 1891 and the addition of illustrations in 1892 was a sound business move, since 33,000 copies were sold that year in cloth covers and another 7,000 in paper covers. The great success of 1892, however, was the “Universal Edition.” It very nearly justified its name, since sales figures exceeded 140,000. The figure was all the more striking since, owing to the copyright problem, sales had all but stopped for a month or two. Houghton, Mifflin’s strategies proved effective, at least in the short term, and the diversified offer was honored by the various parts of the population targeted by the Boston company. When one includes all the editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, over 180,000 copies of Stowe’s 40-year-old novel sold in 1892, a staggering number. Almost half a century after its initial publication, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was again a bestseller. The first rival editions hit bookshops as soon as the copyright expired in May 1893. The sale of Houghton, Mifflin’s editions was halved, but still remained quite respectable, with slightly over 90,000 copies in 1893, thanks mostly to the “Brunswick Edition” (almost 67,000 copies). The latter was also to account for most of the sales of Houghton, Mifflin’s editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1894 (24,022 copies out of a total of 26,549).104 The “Universal Edition” went from 22,000 copies in 1893 to zero in 1894. The overall drop in the sales figures was to continue, 13,000 copies (all 102 Bennett, Bennett and Cushing to Houghton, Mifflin, 5 May 1892; Charles C. Beaman

to the same, 9 May 1892. 103 Ballou, The Building of the House, pp. 390–91. 104 The “Brunswick” edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the “Salem” edition of some of Hawthorne’s works, including The Scarlet Letter, were imitated by Boston publisher Charles E. Brown, and Houghton, Mifflin inserted in PW (16 December 1893: 1010) a card “To the Trade,” in which they stated that they were seeking a court injunction to “restrain the publication and sale” of editions they deemed “unlawful imitations” of their editions.


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editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) in 1895, 6,000 the following year, less than 2,000 in 1897. The 1893–1897 recession certainly did not help, but cannot alone explain the fall in the sales figures; the reason lay in the multiplicity of competing editions of all kinds. During the last two years of the nineteenth century as well as during the first two decades of the twentieth, Houghton, Mifflin’s sales of Uncle Tom’s Cabin rarely exceeded a few hundred copies.105 On behalf of his mother, Charles E. Stowe had in 1891 signed a contract awarding the writer a 5 per cent copyright on the “New Holiday Edition” and 10 per cent on the retail price of the editions in cloth and paper.106 In December 1892, the publishers, expressing their uncertainties about the sale of what would become the “Brunswick Edition” and complaining about the great stocks of the “Universal Edition” they were left with—one might wonder at these remarks in view of the incredible sales figures of the year—persuaded Charles E. Stowe to share the costs of the manufacture as well as to divide the profits and losses. The publishers also suggested transferring the remaining stocks of the “Universal Edition” to the joint account. The proposal was accepted by Charles E. Stowe, who declared himself convinced that the publishers would do “what is best for us all.”107 Stowe’s royalties were naturally in keeping with the sales figures: from slightly over $2,000 in 1891 to a peak of around $6,500 in 1892, $2,400 in 1893, less than $1000 in 1894 and about $700 the next year. Stowe’s royalties on her later works remained unaffected by copyright matters, yet they also showed a marked decline, from an average of $1,000 in the early 1890s down to about $700 in 1895, the same amount she received for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.108 Stowe and Uncle Tom’s Cabin: 1885–1893 Stowe and her Publishers: Reactions to the New Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin The 1879 “Holiday Edition” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was to be the last instance of Stowe’s active involvement in the preparation of a new edition of her first novel. She 105 Record of Book Sales; Ms Am 2030: 31 (1880–1891), 32 (1891–1907), 33 (1905–1923),

HO L.

106 Charles E. Stowe to Houghton, Mifflin, 23 June 1891, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. Although Stowe’s son did not presume to criticize the publishers’ policies, he expressed the wish that all of his mother’s works might be published in cheap editions, both because larger profits were to be made from inexpensive editions rather than from expensive ones, and because he felt that however attractive the two-volume edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (illustrated by Kemble) might be, its price placed it beyond the means of those who would most appreciate it. 107 Houghton, Mifflin to Charles E. Stowe, 16 December 1892. Charles E. Stowe to Houghton, Mifflin, 29 December 1892, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. 108 Copyright Sales Records for Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Books, 1886–1895, bMs Am 2346 (2725), HO L. In February 1896, Stowe transferred the rights to all her works to Houghton, Mifflin in exchange for $1. The firm was to pay her $10,000 over four years: see Winship, “The Greatest Book”: 331.

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went on writing to her publishers, however, to enquire into her accounts or to ask when a particular work of hers was to be re-issued. As she had done with Fields, she occasionally made suggestions, such as prompting her publisher to take full advantage of the relatively new technique of photography to bring out a new edition of Agnes of Sorrento.109 After she gave her son Charles E. Stowe full power to act on her behalf in business matters, the tone of her letters to Houghton, Mifflin underwent a marked change. Since she no longer handled her own affairs, she usually wrote to thank her publishers for some special attention they had paid her, to thank them for sending her flowers on her birthday, for instance.110 Many of Stowe’s letters to Houghton, Mifflin included the request that they send her copies of her works she would give to friends or relatives. This was especially true when a new edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was issued. Stowe never faltered in her keen interest in new editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as her letters of congratulations to her publishers reveal. She was particularly pleased with the 1885 “Popular Edition”: “The copy of the new edition of U-T-Cabin [sic] gives me great satisfaction. So pretty a book, at so cheap a price ought to command a sale ….”111 This mixture of business sense and aesthetic appreciation was typical of Stowe. As she grew older, recollections increasingly informed her reactions to the new editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. She was especially struck by Kemble’s illustrations for the 1892 edition: “Let me tell you how much pleased I am with this new edition. I think the illustrations excellent particularly that of Aunt Chloe pleases me. It reminds me strongly, in expression and attitude of my faithful friend and servant Eliza Buck of many years ago, whom I believe is now in Heaven ….”112 Nostalgia was also evident in her reaction to the “Brunswick Edition”: “The pretty little Brunswick edition of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’ with its pleasant sounding name, brought back to me the happy days of ‘long ago’ […] It was indeed a happy thought, the naming of this new little edition for the birthplace of the original.”113

109 HBS

HO L.

to Houghton, 4 November and 20 December 1880, bMs Am 1925 (1723),

110 HBS to Houghton, Mifflin, 20 June 1893, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318, etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. 111 HBS to Houghton, Mifflin, 3 September 1885. Ms Am 1925 (1723), HO L. 112 HBS to Houghton, Mifflin, 23 February 1892. Book Trades Collection, Folder 6, 1881–1938, AAS. Eliza Buck was Stowe’s cook in Cincinnati. Stowe had described her as “fat gentle, easy, loving and lovable” in her December 1852 letter to Eliza Cabot Follen (reprinted in Hedrick, Reader, pp. 71–6). Stowe also expressed her thanks to Kemble, to whom she dedicated a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: “To Mr Kemble, with grateful acknowledgement, for his faithful and admirable work in illustrating ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’…”. Quoted in Francis Martin, Jr, “Edward Windsor Kemble, A Master of Pen and Ink,” American Art Review, 3/1 (January–February 1976): 54–67, p. 61. 113 Press cutting, without a source or a date, stating that Houghton, Mifflin and Co. has received a “felicitously worded letter from Mrs. Stowe,” and reprinting her letter dated 7 July 1893. The clipping is pasted in a copy of the Brunswick edition (in the HBSC) which bears the


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Stowe and her Readers: The Question of the Characters Crops up Again Each new edition of Stowe’s first novel necessarily brought her back to the past, but readers also played a part by prompting her to reminisce over the now-remote era of the 1850s. Stowe’s correspondence of the late 1880s and early 1890s includes several letters to readers. The readers’ letters themselves have disappeared, but judging from Stowe’s replies, most dealt with Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe remarked on the subject in an 1885 letter to her publishers, writing that “from the letters constantly coming to me in every mail I judge the interest in it [Uncle Tom’s Cabin] is unabated.”114 Stowe’s correspondents frequently wrote to request the writer’s autograph, as can be seen from notes addressed to “Dear Sir” or “Dear Madam,” and which bear Stowe’s signature, frequently accompanied with the sentence “Trust in the Lord and Do Good.” One of the letters is particularly striking, for it conveys the importance of reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin from a spiritual perspective: “My dear Boy / The text of Scripture which I always send with my autograph will show you the only certain way of securing happiness in this life and Forever! / ‘Trust in the Lord’ / ‘And, do good’ / To sincere tho unknown Friend / Harriet Beecher Stowe / May 7 1888.”115 This message of hope was also typical when she dedicated copies of the novel. She occasionally quoted from Isaiah, with, for example, the verses which conclude the preface to Jewett (“He shall not fail, nor be discouraged …”), and she once cited a passage from the novel itself (“Oh! Mas’r George Ye’re too late the Lords [sic] bought me and is going to take me home Heaven is better than Kintuck”), thereby leaving the last word to her novel’s hero. The trembling handwriting of this 1894 dedication intimates at Stowe’s declining health.116 Until the end, however, the writer tried to meet her readers’ expectations and provided individual readers with an ultimate reading guide. Readers also requested answers to specific and sometimes trifling questions, such as Stowe’s age when she wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the place where it was written, or the reason why she began the novel. Some readers wanted detailed information about the circumstances of serialization, its publication in book format, sales figures, and so forth. In reply, Stowe sometimes referred her correspondents to her own introduction to the 1879 edition, or to the biography written by her son and published by Houghton, Mifflin in 1889. Whether her letters contained a mere autograph or a few paragraphs, Stowe consistently answered her readers, and the relationship between the author and her audience—which had started with the published installments in The National Era—lasted to the end of her life.

following dedication, “Eliza T. Stowe / from her affectionate Mother / Harriet Beecher Stowe / Hartford July 2 1893.” 114 HBS to Houghton, Mifflin, 3 September 1885. bMs Am 1925 (1723), HO L. 115 HM 2986, HL. 116 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1892, two-volume edition with illustrations by Kemble, HBSC.

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The main concern of many readers involved the characters in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as Stowe’s familiarity with slavery. An 1888 response to one such request is particularly significant of the way an aging Stowe envisioned her own past: Dear Sir, In reply to your inquiry, give me leave to say that there was at the time I wrote UT [sic] no particular character in my mind—But I had a general knowledge of the whole subject & of the dangers & liabilities of slavery & when I began to write a story it seemed to make itself, unfolding gradually. I had no idea at first of a long story but it grew upon me to its present shape. I must beg you to excuse the brevity of this note as there are many others calling for an answer.117

The notion that the story irrepressibly imposed itself on the writer stands as a recurring element in Stowe’s correspondence, and she dwelled on it at length in her introduction to the 1879 edition. This introduction, however, as well as all the prefaces she had written to her first novel, insisted that the characters were genuine, and had been modeled on real-life persons. The publication of Key also constituted part of her defense of the novel as a true and accurate—if toned-down—portrait of slavery. But near the end of her life, Stowe reversed herself and stressed the role imagination played in the creation of the novel’s characters. The question of the characters was evidently a sore point for Stowe, all the more so as readers and newspapers seemed united in an unholy alliance that constantly raised the issue. Newspapers published the obituaries of one or another of the characters of the novel (usually the title character) so often that in 1893, announcing the death of yet another supposed Uncle Tom—Norman Argo, who died in Kentucky at the venerable age of 111—the Providence Journal commented, “Some characters never die, and next to Washington’s servants the most persistent to live seem to be the numerous Uncle Toms.” In fact, the article continued, the only true pretender to the title, Josiah Henson, had died in 1881.118 If Josiah Henson was generally considered the genuine Uncle Tom—and one of his autobiographies clearly makes this claim119—Lewis G. Clarke was generally acknowledged as the model for George Harris. The debate continued after Stowe’s death, and Milton Clarke explained in 1900 that without his brother and himself, Stowe would never have been able to write Uncle Tom’s Cabin. J. Milton Clarke identified the real-life models for Eliza, Tom and Eva, respectively, while expressing his resentment of Stowe, whose miserliness had led her to give the brothers Clarke a meager one dollar in exchange for their biographical information.120 Eliza 117 HBS

to “Dear Sir,” 13 April 1888, Collection Acquisitions, HBSC. Journal, 10 March 1893. Henson actually died in 1883. 119 Rev. Josiah Henson, Uncle Tom’s Story of His Life from 1789 to 1876 (London, Christian Age Office, 1877). Stowe bore part of the responsibility in Henson’s claim, since she wrote a preface to the work. On Henson’s use of his Uncle Tom persona, see Marcus Wood, Blind Memory, pp. 195–8. 120 Press clipping from the New York Journal, hand-dated 1900, pasted in a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (285,000) bound with A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published by Jewett (HBSC). 118 Providence


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represented another source of speculation; the Hartford Courant of 23 November 1895 reported on a speech delivered the previous day by Reverend Rankin. He described his long-ago meeting with an overweight Eliza who had helped her husband and their six children to flee to Canada. Mrs. Stowe, he claimed, had heard the story from him. Stowe’s replies to the speculations indicate a certain amount of irritation. Thus, when the editor of the Indianapolis Times asked her to check the truth of a rumor that Uncle Tom had been drawn after an old man who formerly lived in Indianapolis, Stowe answered that “the character of uncle [sic] Tom was not the biography of any one man,” that he had in fact been inspired both by her cook’s husband in Cincinnati and by Josiah Henson’s autobiography. She remarked that while the English had tended to mistake Henson for Tom, they might have reflected that the novel’s hero died, whereas Henson remained very much alive. Stowe’s letter concluded with the wish that she might never again be called upon to express herself on that subject.121 A vain hope, as it turned out. In 1885, she replied to a similar question from the editor of the Brooklyn Magazine declaring that, while she had met “several colored men” as honest and faithful as Uncle Tom, her hero was her own creation, and so were the other characters. She acknowledged having read the story of Lewis Clarke while she was writing the novel, but “merely to see that I was keeping within the limits of probability.”122 A few years later, she would make an even more assertive claim to authorial imagination: “The characters of Uncle Tom and George Harris were imaginary suggested in the first instance by Josiah Henson and Lewis Clark [sic] but greatly improved by imagination.”123 The question would hound Stowe to the end. In 1892, the Chicago Tribune informed its readers that the cabin where Tom lived on Legree’s plantation had been located in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. D.B. Corley, of Abilene, Texas, was making arrangements to have it transported to the World Columbian Exposition that was to take place in Chicago the following year.124 Stowe must have experienced considerable exasperation at this near-ceaseless challenge to account for the source of her characters. As late as 1895, a year before she died, she was still writing notes insisting that her heroes were her own creation: “I again assert as I have already stated in the columns of the ‘New York Morning Journal’ that the characters of Uncle Tom and George Harris, had no living prototypes, but were created by me.”125 Taken as a whole, Stowe’s replies could hardly have enlightened a 121 Press clipping from the Indianapolis Times, hand-dated 1882, pasted in a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, London, C.H. Clarke and Co., 1852 (New York Historical Society, New York City); Stowe’s letter, reprinted in the article, is dated 27 July 1882. 122 HBS to the editor of the Brooklyn Magazine, 2 April 1885. Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318, etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. 123 HBS to “Dear Sir,” 28 April 1891, EG Box 58, HL. 124 Unsigned article, “Not his Real Home. Uncle Tom’s Alleged Cabin Coming to Chicago,” the Chicago Tribune, 20 November 1892, UVa web. D.B. Corley wrote a book on his “discovery,” A Visit to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Chicago, Laird and Lee, 1892). 125 Holograph statement removed from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1852, copy 2, vol. 1, signed HBS, dated 8 December 1895, Berg Collection, New York Public Library.

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reader, for they were often contradictory. She sometimes claimed her characters were pure products of her imagination, sometimes defined them as variations on actual persons, while her introduction to the 1879 edition, reprinted in a number of later editions, told a different story. The writer James Lane Allen, who had been asked by the editor of The Century Magazine to write an article on the sources of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, summarized the impossibility of the task. After having completed serious research, he realized that he had been collecting a “body of Kentucky legends” and wisely suggested a safer topic.126 Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Nostalgia By giving Uncle Tom’s Cabin new “clothes,” Houghton, Osgood, and later Houghton, Mifflin provided the novel with a new audience, and temporarily raised its sales figures once again to bestseller status. Marketing strategies, however, rarely succeed if a book no longer meets the needs or expectations of an audience. “Every society rewrites its past, every reader rewrites its texts, and, if they have any continuing life at all, at some point every printer redesigns them,” noted McKenzie.127 That “life” remained in Uncle Tom’s Cabin 40 years after its first publication is evidenced by its sales figures, by the frequent references in the press to the novel and/or its author, as well as by the flow of correspondence exchanged between Stowe and her readers. The novel enjoyed a dual status, as a classic and as a popular book, two sales arguments frequently used by both its publishers and commentators.128 Yet as time went by, it increasingly appeared as a novel of greater historic than literary importance because of the part it had played in the overthrow of slavery. As George William Curtis, political editor of Harper’s Weekly, put it in a quotation often cited by Houghton, Mifflin in advertisements and blurbs for the novel, “No book was ever more of a historical event than ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin.’” Hence the debate over its characters and sources, and the requests for details about its composition. Long before its copyright expired, Uncle Tom’s Cabin had come into the public domain, a common property of all Americans and a monument to a past then in the process of being rewritten. As David Blight and Alessandra Lorini have demonstrated, the period following the Civil War, especially the Gilded Age, was marked by an effort toward national reconciliation, linked with a feeling of nostalgia which found perhaps its best

126 James Lane Allen to Richard W. Gilder, 1 October 1886, Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, MSS 6318, etc., Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, UVa. Allen wrote an account of slavery in Kentucky in which he printed an extract from a letter Stowe had sent him; she claimed that she had “traveled and visited somewhat extensively in Kentucky.” In fact she had made only one visit to Kentucky. 127 D.F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the Sociology of Texts, p. 25. 128 Not everybody agreed, however; see Forrest Wilson, Crusader, pp. 633–4. For a detailed account of the reception of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the last decades of the nineteenth century, see Thomas Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, Chapter 18, and Sheryl F. Savina-Snyder, “La réputation de Harriet Beecher Stowe”, Chapter 7.


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expression in the novels of Thomas Nelson Page and Joel Chandler Harris.129 Their novels continued the tradition of the plantation novel and followed in the footsteps of the numerous fictional answers to Uncle Tom’s Cabin published in the 1850s that depicted happy and faithful slaves lovingly cared for by their masters. This romantic vision of the antebellum South was quite different from Stowe’s portrayal of the horrors of slavery, yet it shared a number of traits with the theatrical adaptations of the novel, which became increasingly popular as the century drew to a close, and doubtless helped keep the novel alive in the American imagination.130 Although the nostalgic trend was to accelerate as the Civil War grew more remote, it could already be traced in the early 1870s in the nation’s periodicals, which offered readers a curious mix of positive representations of African-Americans as citizens and of stereotyped illustrations that depicted slavery in a rosy light.131 Engravings by Richmond painter and illustrator William Ludwell Sheppard, for example, showed former slaves visiting their masters or receiving their visits for Christmas. According to the periodical which printed the engraving, the scene reflected the continued “friendly regard of the former master and the trustful affection of the former slaves,” or, on the other hand, provided an opportunity to rejoice over the abolition of slavery: “though the world may lose a great deal of poetry and picturesqueness in the process, the substantial gain to humanity will be great and permanent.”132 Americans’ fascination with their own recent history was clearly revealed by the popularity of the numerous accounts of Civil War veterans, both in periodicals (The Century, for example) and in books (General Grant’s Memoirs was a huge bestseller).133 As David Blight observes, “Civil War reminiscence became a lucrative industry after 1880.”134 It is no accident that renewed interest in Uncle Tom’s Cabin should coincide with the nation’s desire to know more about its own history. Stowe’s first novel was also made to play a role in the uneasy and shifting perception of African Americans and slavery that the nation was in the process of 129 David Blight, Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press, 2001); Alessandra Lorini, Rituals of Race: American Public Culture and the Search for Racial Democracy (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1999). See also Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York, Knopf, 1998). 130 See Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, chapter 19; on Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a play, see also Birdoff, The World’s Greatest Hit, and Andrews, “Theme and Variations: Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Book, Play, and Film.” 131 See Joshua Brown, Beyond the Lines: Pictorial Reporting, Everyday Life, and the Crisis of Gilded Age America, (Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002), pp. 112–30. 132 William Ludwell Sheppard, “Merry Christmas and Christmas gift, Ole Massa,” Every Saturday, 31 December 1870; “Christmas in Virginia—A Present from the Great House,” Harper’s Weekly, 30 December 1871. Both are reprinted in Peter H. Wood and Karen C.C. Dalton, Winslow Homer’s Images of Blacks: The Civil War and Reconstruction Years (Austin, The Menil Collection, University of Texas Press, 1988), pp. 65 and 90–92. 133 James D. Hart, The Popular Book, pp. 151–2. 134 David Blight, Race and Reunion, p. 171.

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negotiating. When James Lane Allen decided to submit to Richard Watson Gilder an account of slavery in Kentucky rather than the originally planned article on the sources of Stowe’s novel, he partially rewrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Stowe had, according to Allen, made a number of grievous mistakes in her portrait of slavery, especially when she condemned Tom to his tragic fate. She had not, however, failed to see “the fairest aspects of domestic slavery in the United States” embodied in “the kind, even affectionate, relations of the races under the old regime,” at least in Kentucky. Allen described slavery as a system in which masters and mistresses honestly tried to take good care of their slaves while rueing the institution itself, as a system in which “welltreated negroes cared not a snap for liberty.” Edward Windsor Kemble, who provided the illustrations for the article, presented Century readers with a portrait of an aged Uncle Tom smoking his pipe, a child on his knees, outside a cabin embellished with plants and flowers. In a “corrected” happy ending to the novel, Tom was not sold and lived happily with his family.135 Thanks to the institution of slavery, Allen maintained, the enslaved became more responsible than they would otherwise have been, and acquired the “manly virtues of dignity and self-respect united to the Christian virtues of humility, long-suffering, and forgiveness.” Tom naturally stood as the perfect embodiment of those virtues. A few years later, Kemble provided a similar visual commentary to the text of the novel itself with his illustrations for the 1892 edition. The deliberate emphasis on slaves’ daily life, the avoidance of all that might hint at the brutality of the system, resulted in a toning down of the text, and a depiction of slavery as essentially benign. By the end of the copyright period, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was read as a novel that had exerted a tremendous influence on the abolition of slavery, and it was increasingly interpreted as a plantation novel, a paradox whose full meaning and implications would be made clear in the years that followed.

135 James L. Allen, “Mrs. Stowe’s ‘Uncle Tom’ at Home in Kentucky,” The Century Magazine (October 1887): 852–67.

Chapter 7

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1893–1930 Houghton, Mifflin had been rightly concerned about the expiration of Uncle Tom’s Cabin’s copyright. As soon as the novel entered the public domain, it was snapped up and issued in an amazing number of editions, most of them inexpensive and with little paratextual material other than the author’s preface. The publishing history of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, especially in the last decade of the nineteenth century, paints a picture of the inexpensive book market in the United States at that time, both in respect to the profusion of cheap collections, series, and “libraries” in which the novel appeared, and in terms of the paltry quality of many of the products. The sheer number of editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin reveals that Stowe’s novel was a highly marketable commodity. In contrast to the inexpensive editions—popular in the sense that they targeted what Jewett would have called “the masses”—a whole array of more costly, often lavishly-illustrated editions were prompted by Stowe’s death in 1896. Like Stowe’s complete works brought out by Houghton, Mifflin, the “memorial editions” carried learned introductions and other paratextual accompaniment. The “popular” and “memorial” types of edition had little in common, save that in both cases similar editions were issued under different publisher imprints, with only the cover, title page and occasional illustration(s) marking the distinction. What these editions looked like, how they were marketed to the public, and what they revealed of the critical status of Stowe’s first novel, are the topics of this chapter. Editions with Scholarly Introductions Unlike the “popular” editions, the editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that included some kind of scholarly paratext were relatively few. Also unlike the popular editions, which circulated through the mail or were found in various outlets, including dry-goods stores, many, if not most, of the memorial editions sold by subscription. Whereas in most cases cheap editions paid attention to Uncle Tom’s Cabin only as part of a series that included other works, editions with scholarly paratext treated the text as a singular creation, with a unique history, a work deserving serious critical evaluation. In addition to the “memorial” editions issued after Stowe’s death, several editions carried introductions. W.S. Walsh wrote an introduction to an edition copyrighted by Henry Altemus in Philadelphia in 1894. Two years after Stowe’s death, Thomas For the distribution of cheap books in the 1890s, see, for instance, “Sloppy Editions,” PW, 6 January 1894: 11.

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Wentworth Higginson, writer, anti-slavery activist and co-founder of The Atlantic Monthly, prefaced an edition published by Appleton in the “World’s Great Books” series. In 1926, Macmillan printed an edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the “Modern Readers’ Series” featuring an introduction by scholar Francis Pendleton Gaines. When Houghton, Mifflin issued Stowe’s complete works in late 1896, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was preceded with an unsigned biography and “The Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” by Charles Dudley Warner, a writer who had been a friend and a neighbor of Stowe in Hartford. Stowe’s death triggered the publication of two lavishly illustrated “Memorial Editions,” both of which came out under different imprints—the “Art Memorial Edition” was copyrighted by Philadelphia publisher J.E. Potter in 1897 and issued under the imprints of three Chicago publishers; it included an impressive amount of paratextual material by Professor Charles Morris. The second “memorial” edition, which carried an unsigned introduction, was issued in 1896 in London by Cassell. In the United States, this edition was copyrighted by John C. Winston (1897) and came out under his imprint as well as that of five other publishers, based in Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, respectively. Some of the above editions were relatively cheap; Altemus’s sold for 40 and 50 cents, depending on the binding; others were more costly, with the Art Memorial Editions selling between $2 and $3.50, again depending on the binding, while the price of the other memorial edition ranged from $2.25 to $3.50. Houghton, Mifflin’s sixteen-volume edition of Stowe’s Writings sold at $24 to $64 for the large paper limited edition, which carried the writer’s autograph. At $300 a set, Appleton’s 40volume “The World’s Great Books” was by far the most costly. Like the “memorial” editions, the Appleton series and Houghton, Mifflin’s limited edition of Writings sold by subscription. Canvassers or agents for subscription publishers would carry dummy books, offering samples of bindings, pages and illustrations, and assorted promotional material, to encourage customers to subscribe. Emphasis was generally placed on the number of pages and illustrations, the quality and aesthetics of the bindings, and on the book as a beautiful coffee-table object. Marketing strategies differed considerably, however. Houghton, Mifflin touted its edition as “definitive,” and underscored the months of work that had gone into the preparation of its “thoroughly edited” set of Stowe’s complete works. To guarantee the literary value of the works in the “World’s Great Books,” Appleton listed an impressive “Committee of Selection” that included a statesman, a writer, a university president, and the Librarian of Congress. The “Art Memorial” edition resorted to a whole array of arguments to entice customers. The publisher stressed the addition of exclusive scholarly material, reassured readers that this “charming story” was eternally fresh in its lessons and narrative interest, and emphasized the timeliness of the edition after

Prices: from publishers’ catalogs, Publishers’ Trade List Annual, Cumulative Book Index, The American Catalogue, The United States Catalog: Books in Print; for Appleton’s series, see Frank E. Comparato, “D. Appleton & Company,” in Madeleine B. Stern (ed.), Publishers for Mass Entertainment in Nineteenth Century America (Boston, G.K. Hall, 1980), pp. 17–24. PW, 26 September 1896: 469.


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the recent death of the author. Illustrations for this “classic work of fiction” had been especially designed and adapted to the modern readers’ “developed tastes.” To this end, the publishers had employed “a corps of the ablest modern artists,” who had “made special study of characters, scenes and incidents in the South before the war.” The sample book for the other memorial edition also played on a variety of selling points, using extracts from reviews published in the 1850s and also after Stowe’s death to draw potential customers’ attention to the usual arguments for the novel’s unprecedented popularity, literary value, and historical importance. Employing almost the same words as its rival, this edition contrasted the “crude” woodcuts of the past with the illustrations in the present volume, which, the publisher claimed, were the finest ever made “for any story in the English language.” Examining the introductions to these editions allows us to understand how the novel was viewed in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which in turn reveals changes in American society’s vision of its own history as well as transformations in literary judgement. Introductions: Commonalities and Differences Not a single introduction failed to underline the incredible success of the novel upon publication and its continued popularity. Figures were drawn from various sources, with frequent recourse to Stowe’s introduction to the 1879 edition or to George Bullen’s bibliography in the same edition. Many of the introductions also relied on Stowe’s introduction to describe the inception of the novel, and C.D. Warner’s account of the story of the novel drew so heavily on the introduction immediately following it in the Houghton, Mifflin edition of The Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe that readers may have been left to wonder why two similar accounts had been used in the same edition.

“Publisher’s Introduction,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Art Memorial Edition (Chicago, Thompson & Thomas; Chicago, Dominion, c. 1897). Sample book for the Syndicate Publishing Company, Philadelphia, c. 1897 (HBSC), i.e., Cassell’s 1896 British edition. Although the Art Memorial Edition illustrations were indeed the work of different artists, this memorial edition did not, as the title page and the sample book claimed, contain original drawings by different artists. Only one artist, Swedish illustrator Jenny Nystrom-Stoopendaal, had produced the illustrations, first published in a Swedish edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1895 (see Appendix 2), re-used the following year by Cassell for a British edition, then by John C. Winston in the United States for a reprint of the Swedish edition and a reprint of Cassell’s British edition (both copyrighted by Winston in 1897). The exaggerated claim that different artists had contributed illustrations was typical of this type of publication. Subscription books had a poor reputation, often owing to their aggressive marketing, misleading announcements as to the number of pages and illustrations, and their commercial approach to literature. The “Publishers’ Note,” which preceded the biography and other paratextual material at the beginning of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (volumes 1 and 2 of Writings, with an abridged Key) explained that Dudley’s sketch was based on Stowe’s introduction, but that a slight repetition had

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Historical Importance Preface writers systematically explained the historical importance of the novel by its popularity. As W.S. Walsh noted, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was read everywhere “with passion, with enthusiasm, with tears.” Emotion moved readers to action, a point which Stowe had made clear in her 1879 introduction, and which the authors of introductions generally admitted. Prefaces provided varying assessments of the enormous influence of the novel. The anonymous author of the introduction to the British memorial edition was cautious when he stated, “The good which ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ achieved can never be estimated ….” Similarly, Charles Dudley Warner’s hailed the novel as “the advent of a new force in politics.” Some preface writers went further in their evaluation of the impact of the novel: Professor Charles Morris and Thomas W. Higginson established a clear link between Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Civil War. In his 1926 introduction, Francis Pendleton Gaines reported that Lincoln credited the novel with “large responsibility for the Civil War.” W.S. Walsh expanded the geographic spread of the work: “Who shall estimate the influence which this book has had in the cause of liberty in emancipating the slaves, not only of North America, but of South; nay, in freeing the serfs of Russia?” Several of the writers of introductions voiced the sense that enough time had elapsed for the novel, and therefore the past, to be viewed without passion. Thus, according to W.S. Walsh (1894): We of the present can look upon the past with calm eyes. The peculiar institution which the book attacked has been abolished. The passions which it engendered, the animosities it provoked, are dead. North and South can now do justice to the motive which prompted the composition of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.”

As a matter of fact, this serene vision of Uncle Tom’s Cabin seems very much akin to wishful thinking. A year before, Francis A. Shoup, a former Confederate soldier, had given his own assessment of Stowe’s novel. The conclusion to his article assigned Uncle Tom’s Cabin a tremendous power over American history while revealing that the wounds were not healed for all, especially not for war veterans: […] has Mrs. Stowe ever tried to think what her book has been a chief factor of bringing upon the world? Has she ever tried to weigh the occasional and rare horrors of the old

been allowed to remain, so as not to “break into the logical order of the essay” (The Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe, vol. 1, Boston, Houghton, Mifflin, 1896, pp. vii–viii). W.S. Walsh, “Introduction,” p. xi (Altemus edition); “Introduction and Life of the Author,” unsigned, p. x (Winston edition); Charles Dudley Warner, “The Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” p. xxxi (Writings); F.P. Gaines, p. x (Macmillan edition); W.S. Walsh, “Introduction,” p. xii (Altemus edition). W.S. Walsh, “Introduction,” p. xiii (Altemus edition).


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slave days, hard as they were, against the agonies of the million of brave men mutilated and done to death in the ranks of the blue and gray?

While the introductions firmly placed Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the context of the debate over slavery, their authors disagreed in respect to the veracity of the portrait of the institution in the novel. Charles Morris summarized part of A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin to support his assertion that the book was based on authentic events and real-life models. For his part, Thomas W. Higginson drew upon his own experience as an anti-slavery activist and the commanding officer of a “colored” regiment during the Civil War. He vouched for the essential truth of Stowe’s picture of slavery while objecting to some of its details. Stowe had, for instance, greatly exaggerated the feeling of physical aversion for blacks experienced by Northern abolitionists and embodied in Ophelia. Gaines, on the other hand, judged the entire panorama of plantation life untrue: “It is untrue in its omissions, untrue in its general atmosphere, untrue in the lack of that ‘sympathy of comprehension’ which must inform him who would portray adequately the life of a people.”10 The debate over the representation of slavery was evidently far from over. As always, personal experience informed the interpretation of the novel. To a degree, therefore, Uncle Tom’s Cabin continued to be read in a sectional spirit. Just as some authors of introductions noted that slavery and the Civil War were now sufficiently remote for Uncle Tom’s Cabin to be looked at with an unjaundiced eye, some commentators also viewed the antebellum South with a certain nostalgia. Shoup, who had so bitterly contemplated the role of Stowe’s novel in the advent of the war, appreciated the way the writer had depicted what he called “the fairer side of domestic servitude.”11 The sample book for an 1897 “Memorial Edition” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin resorted to a similar argument: masters were kind, and slaves were happy in the antebellum South. The prospectus quoted a newspaper review: “How true to nature, and how beautiful an illustration of the fairest side of life in the aristocratic families of the South is the mutual affection between ‘Young Mas’r George’ and these noble friends of his, the inmates of the Cabin.”12 This strange re-reading of Francis A. Shoup, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Forty Years After,” Sewanee Review No. 11 (1893), reprinted in Elizabeth Ammons (ed.), Critical Essays on Harriet Beecher Stowe (Boston, G.K. Hall, 1980), pp. 49–59. 10 F.P. Gaines, “Introduction,” p. xiii (Macmillan edition). Gaines, born and raised in the South, had published in 1925 The Southern Plantation: A Study in the Development and the Accuracy of a Tradition. 11 Francis A. Shoup, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Forty Years After,” p. 52. See also Francis A. Shoup, “Has the Southern Pulpit Failed?” (North American Review, 130/283 [June 1880]: 585–603), in which Shoup uses Stowe’s “wonderful book” to demonstrate the positive sides of slavery. 12 Sample book for the Syndicate Publishing Company, Philadelphia, c. 1897 (HBSC), i.e., Cassell’s 1896 British edition. This particular specimen presents two different bindings, the title page, as well as few pages, illustrations, a publisher’s note with details about the edition, extracts from reviews, and other promotional material.

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Stowe’s novel, which perverts the writer’s original message—Stowe’s point was that the existence of “good” masters could in no way justify the system, since masters could run into debt or die, and their slaves would be sold away—places Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the category of “plantation novels” and, more specifically, the “Anti-Tom novels” which had followed the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and meant to show slavery as a benevolent institution, in which slaves were uniformly loyal to masters who treated them with a fatherly affection. The publishers of the 1897 edition may have employed the quotation with a view to attracting Southern readers.13 Yet it is no accident that this sort of argument should have been used as a selling point in an edition published at a time when segregation was slowly becoming law in the South. At the same period, whether in the press, or in novels, at the theater or at movies, representations of African Americans were increasingly distorted and caricatural.14 The nation had turned to other fights, and in The Marrow of Tradition (1901), Charles Chesnutt explained the general indifference to the plight of African Americans: “The nation was rushing forward with giant strides toward colossal wealth and world domination, before the exigencies of which mere abstract theories must not be permitted to stand.”15 Preoccupied with the new empire acquired during the Spanish-American war, and the expansion and consolidation of the country’s industry, North and South drew closer in a common rewriting of history.16 Many historical works—and the best example is U.B. Phillips’ 1918 American Negro Slavery—interpreted slavery as a benign institution in which generous masters were committed to civilizing child-like African-Americans. This re-writing of history exerted no small influence on the paratextual material of new editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Most of the introductions recontextualized the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin without paying particular attention to the present condition of African Americans. Only one preface writer, Thomas W. Higginson, chose to remind his audience that current race relations left much to be desired and that in view of “the brave effort”

13 On hostile Southern reactions to Uncle Tom’s Cabin at that time, see Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, Chapter 18. 14 For a discussion of how African Americans were represented in a number of Northern dailies and monthlies, see Rayford W. Logan, The Betrayal of the Negro, New, Enlarged Edition (New York, Collier Books, 1965), especially chapters 13 and 18. 15 Charles W. Chesnutt, The Marrow of Tradition (1901), New York, Penguin, 1993, p. 238. 16 On sectional reconciliation at the expense of African Americans in the peace jubilees after the end of the Spanish-American War, see Fabian Hilfrich, “The Celebration of National Reunion in the Peace Jubilees of 1898,” pp. 228–56 in Geneviève Fabre et al. (eds), Celebrating Ethnicity and Nation: American Festive Culture from the Revolution to the Early Twentieth Century (New York, Berghahn Books, 2001). The debate over the representation of slavery that took place through the various introductions reveals the limits of that reconciliation.


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being made by the African-American race to raise itself, the mission of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was far from completed.17 A “Wonderful Leaping Fish”: The Vexed Question of Literary Judgement In 1981, Ann Douglas quite rightly described the critical status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as “vexed and uncertain.”18 Many of the writers and academics who authored introductions to the novel a century earlier would no doubt have agreed. Some of the prefaces fully performed their promotional function, warmly recommending the work without any apparent second thoughts. W.S. Walsh, for one, flatly declared that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was a masterpiece. Other introductions were more nuanced. Most preface writers agreed on the qualities of the novel—humor, pathos, vivid characterizations, power of deeply-felt conviction—as well as on its flaws—want of unity due to the double plot, excess of melodrama, unlikely final reunion of some of the characters, inelegance of style. In the 1890s, the religious character of the work had become a liability for some preface writers; the pathos sometimes hovered dangerously close to melodrama. The link between art and propaganda was a contentious issue, and Charles Dudley Warner, wondering whether the work was “an abolition pamphlet” or “one of the few great masterpieces of fiction that the world has produced,” side-stepped his own question. Time would judge, he concluded, leaving the question for future generations to answer.19 In 1926, Francis Pendleton Gaines was more categorical: he regarded Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a reform pamphlet “in the garb of fiction,” like Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona or Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle.20 Yet as Gaines himself noted, if Stowe’s novel had been a mere pamphlet, it should have died with Emancipation. Not only did it survive, but it remained popular. This made assessing the literary value of Uncle Tom’s Cabin something of a challenge, and a few of the introductions acknowledged the difference between popular reception and critical evaluation. Morris noted that the work “may not fully respond to the canons of criticism,” but concluded in favor of “the verdict of the world,” which, he believed, was “surely of far more weight than the decision of a narrow-visioned anatomist of words and phrases.” The British introduction ended on a similar note, with the writer also siding with the “popular verdict” as that which “most adequately meets the 17

T.W. Higginson, “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” p. xiv (Appleton edition). A year after Stowe died, PW reported that her son, Charles E. Stowe, had received a number of letters suggesting that a monument be erected to honor her memory. Charles E. Stowe answered that a Harriet Beecher Stowe scholarship at Hampton, Fisk, or Tuskegee would be a much more appropriate token of admiration (“Notes on Authors,” PW, 23 January 1897: 85). 18 Introduction to the Penguin Classics edition, p. 9. 19 C.D. Warner, “The Story of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” pp. xxxi and lii (Writings). For poet and critic Harriet Monroe, art and propaganda could not co-exist: “The noble purpose of emancipating the slaves, to which Uncle Tom’s Cabin was dedicated, cannot give that book the importance in literature which it must always have in history.” (“Notes and Comments. Purpose in Art,” North American Review, October 1896: 504–505). 20 F.P. Gaines, “Introduction,” p. xii (Macmillan edition).

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case.”21 However, when literary hierarchies were established by the various authors of introductions, Uncle Tom’s Cabin systematically failed to achieve first-rank status. The novel was both a flawed work and a masterpiece, or perhaps a minor classic. This puzzle was perhaps best expressed by Henry James when he compared Uncle Tom’s Cabin to “a wonderful leaping fish,” a unique phenomenon, therefore, a novel which defies generic classification and traditional literary assessment.22 The problem of passing literary judgement on Uncle Tom’s Cabin was compounded by the inextricable link established between the novel’s historical importance, its popularity, and its literary value, or lack thereof. When the influence of theatrical adaptations was also taken into account (and many preface writers did so), the picture became incredibly complex. Hence the hesitations and contradictions of the allographic paratext.23 Popular Editions Many of the editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin brought out after the copyright expired were undated. However, the Publishers’ Weekly, The American Catalogue, The United States Catalog: Books in Print, the Publishers’ Trade List Annual, and The Cumulative Book Index allow for an approximate dating of a number of these editions, sometimes confirmed by inscriptions in the volumes themselves. The table of editions placed as an appendix to this work clearly shows that most of the cheap editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were issued in the last decade of the nineteeth century. The United States Catalog of Books in Print, 1899, lists 21 publishers for Stowe’s novel, and quotes over 60 different price tags. And yet, save for the edition issued under the imprint of the Dominion company, it leaves out the “Memorial Editions” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Among the firms named in the United States Catalog, 10 hailed from New York, five from Philadelphia, four from Chicago, and only two, including Houghton, Mifflin, from Boston. “Libraries” Post-Civil War technological improvements led to the “second paperback revolution,” with the emergence of cheap “libraries” in the 1870s. Most cheap editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were brought out as part of these libraries, or series. Some libraries in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared touted reading as a leisure activity 21

Professor Charles Morris, “The Story of the Book,” p. 36 (Chicago, Dominion edition); “Introduction and Life of the Author,” unsigned, p. viii (Winston edition). 22 Henry James, A Small Boy and Others, 1913, quoted in Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, p. 341. 23 Gérard Genette classifies the paratext under three headings: authorial (produced by the author), editorial (produced by the editor or publisher), and allographic (produced by someone who is neither the author, nor the editor or publisher). The prefaces written by Gaines and others belong to the third category (Genette, Paratexts, Introduction).


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(“Arm Chair Library”; “Chimney Corner Series”). Reading was also a means by which to improve one’s social status. The paper cover of the “Arm Chair Library,” for instance, depicted a neat and orderly middle-class parlor in which a man read by the fireside while two women, seated in the background, were engaged in the same activity. For buyers of this poorly-manufactured 25-cent edition, reading was equated with social mobility. Other libraries played on a double-pronged strategy to attract purchasers: by emphasizing the popularity of the works (“Neely’s Popular Library”; “New Argyle Series of Popular Authors”), they assured potential buyers of a good read, guaranteed by many previous customers. Others chose to stress the quality of the works rather than their best-selling status, as in Rand McNally’s “Alpha Library” or Crowell’s “Thin Paper Classics.” Some played on both arguments, as in “The World’s Popular Classics,” published under the imprint of the New York firm, Books Inc. Publishers’ advertisements and catalogues expressed an aim that did not greatly differ from Jewett’s desire to make Uncle Tom’s Cabin available to the “masses”: the libraries were meant to democratize great literature by making it accessible to all. As Hurst put it in one of his undated and poorly-manufactured editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “It is a wonder of modern book making, and a blessing of infinite value to humanity, that it is now possible to present a great number of the best complete works of the world’s most famous authors, in the form and at the prices here presented.”24 The careful selection of titles by the publisher was underscored by the systematic use of the same superlatives. Works were always “the choicest” and the “world’s best literature”; they sold “by the millions” or were “standard,” “acknowledged classics” that had “stood the test of time” and whose authors were “the greatest,” “the most popular,” and “of world-wide reputation.” The Status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin An examination of the titles in the same collection as Uncle Tom’s Cabin indicates the status of Stowe’s novel in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Neely’s Popular Library offered a hodge-podge of works belonging to different genres and periods. It listed Uncle Tom’s Cabin with other novels (for instance a work by French novelist Paul Bourget), collections of sketches (such as Reveries of a Bachelor by Ik Marvel, the pen-name of Donald Grant Mitchell), a cookbook (Martha Washington’s Cookbook), a volume of social etiquette, and a work entitled People’s Reference Book, which touted no fewer then “999,999 Facts.”25 Most of the collections including Uncle Tom’s Cabin were, however, more consistent and often included novels only, with lists endlessly proposing the same works by the same authors. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter, another Houghton, Mifflin title whose copyright had also recently expired, was to be found together with Uncle Tom’s Cabin in many of the libraries. British authors were represented by Dickens, Stevenson, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, 24 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, New Argyle Series of Popular Authors (New York, Hurst and Co., undated). 25 Advertisement, PW, 12 August 1893: 219.

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Wilkie Collins, and Arthur Conan Doyle, while Jules Verne and Alexandre Dumas were frequent contenders for the title of standard authors from France. The series sometimes included both reprints and editions of recent works. Burt’s “Home Library,” for instance, listed Stowe alongside Emerson (another Houghton, Mifflin author in the public domain), Cooper, and late nineteenth-century works by J.M. Barrie and Hall Caine. In the list of the “Favorite Library” (American News Company), Southworth and Ouida (Louise de la Ramée), two writers extremely popular in the 1850s and 1860s, were featured with the Brontë sisters and George Eliot, but also Balzac, Gaboriau, Conan Doyle, and many authors whose names have been long forgotten. Libraries and series therefore mixed old and recent, copyright and public domain, American and European novels, essays and travel books, without any particular hierarchy. Their sales potential and continued popularity or recent bestsellerdom were evidently what brought these disparate titles together in the same collections. Significantly, most of the libraries bound their titles in uniform covers, and the titles were not advertised separately: they were part of a package, and the collection prevailed over individual titles. The American female novelists who had authored many of the bestsellers of the 1850s and 1860s had largely disappeared. Only E.D.E.N. Southworth, and Maria Cummins (The Lamplighter) sometimes appeared in the cheap libraries. Stowe herself was represented almost exclusively through Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and the American News Company’s “Favorite Library” edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was the exception rather than the rule when its title page introduced Stowe as “The Author of ‘The Minister’s Wooing.’”26 In the 1890s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin continued to enjoy a special status among Stowe’s works, a status Houghton, Mifflin had helped create and continued to help maintain by regularly publishing new editions and marketing the work as both a bestseller and a classic.27 Yet the great variety of works proposed in cheap series clearly demonstrates that the inclusion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin was more indicative of the work’s continued popularity than of any acknowledged literary greatness. In and of itself, then, that Stowe’s first novel appeared in so many libraries cannot be taken to mean that publishers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries recognized it as a “first-class novel,” as the Arm Chair Library described the works of fiction in its series. 26 Some of her other works were occasionally included in libraries or published in cheap editions; in 1907, Mayflower appeared in Hurst’s “Home Series,” and Burt brought out an edition of The Pearl of Orr’s Island (The American Catalog, 1905–1907, p. 1002). 27 The “Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published By Houghton, Mifflin and Company,” dated 1905–1906, demonstrates that the publishers ranked Stowe’s works, and particularly Uncle Tom’s Cabin, among the classics of American literature. In addition to the Complete Works, Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in eight different editions, including Cambridge Classics, Riverside Literature Series, and Riverside School Library (“A series of fifty books of permanent value”). The limited edition of Stowe’s Works (exhausted by that time) was one of only eleven such “Limited Editions of Standard Works.” This series included Whittier, Hawthorne, Bret Harte, Shelley, Holmes, and Emerson.


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Recycling Editions Many of the cheap libraries took full advantage of the continued popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to issue the work in several series or editions. F.M. Lupton brought out the novel in several series, including the “Arm Chair Library,” the “Elite Series,” and the “Chimney Corner Series.” Hurst included the novel in his “New Argyle Series of Popular Authors,” as well as in his “Cambridge Classics,” but also offered it in many other series. There was a great deal of recycling in these editions. Hurst, for example, published a 452-page edition with a frontispiece, then reissued the same edition with a different frontispiece and several illustrations. Lupton’s “Arm Chair Library” and “Chimney Corner Series” editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were identical, save for the paper covers and the position of the first two illustrations. Caldwell used the same plates three times, changing only the bindings and title pages, and employing different types of paper. Not only did publishers recycle their own editions, they often used one another’s plates or imitated rival editions. Many of the volumes published under different imprints therefore turn out to be extremely similar. Neely’s “Popular Library” edition of 1893 reappeared under the imprint of F.M. Lupton, with an added frontispiece, and a cloth binding. When R.F. Fenno brought out a similar edition in 1899, the frontispiece and table of contents had been removed, as well as the preface and the biography. They were subsequently restored in an edition copyrighted in 1901 by Hurst, the only one of these publishers to acknowledge Neely’s 1893 copyright deposit. The same plates were used for editions brought out under the New York imprints of W.L. Allison, A.L. Burt and Caldwell, and issued by M.A. Donohue in Chicago. Caldwell’s two-volumes-in-one edition was strikingly similar to editions published by Hurst, Donohue Brothers, and the Home Book Company. Some of the above similarities can be accounted for quite easily. Neely went bankrupt in 1899, and his plates were probably bought by Hurst.28 F.M. Lupton became the Federal Book Company in 1902, which explains why similar editions were brought out under two imprints. W.L. Allison’s and M.A. Donohue’s editions were alike because, as Donohue Brothers (successors to Donohue, Henneberry, and predecessors to M.A. Donohue) announced in Books in Print 1899, they had succeeded W.L. Allison. Other cases are more obscure, and the difficulty is compounded by the fact that few copyright mentions are to be found in these often-undated volumes. In the wake of Grosset and Dunlap’s successful experiment at rebinding paperbacks in cloth covers, the development of reprint libraries in the 1880s and 1890s may at least partly account for so many publishers issuing editions that were almost entirely alike. These publishers may, for instance, have bought remainders or overprints from other publishers and rebound them with a new title page.29 Two of Grosset and Dunlap’s main competitors, A.L. Burt, and the American News Company, were among the 28 For Neely’s bankruptcy, see Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing in the United States, vol. 2, pp. 450–51. 29 This may account for the lack of copyright mention in most “popular” editions.

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publishers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In some cases, an examination of the volumes shows slight typographical differences; in others, the same plates seem to have been used over and over again, until the type became hardly legible. In view of their often poor manufacturing, it is somewhat surprising to note that most of these cheap editions respected both the text and the authorial paratext. Among 40 of the “popular” editions examined, only half a dozen lack the subtitle, the epigraphs, and/or the preface, and four of the six offer an abridged text without warning the reader. There was little consistency in the process. F.M. Lupton suppressed all the epigraphs in one of his undated editions while his other editions included them. In many of the editions, the Parker footnote reappeared in Chapter 12, while Chapter 8 missed its heading in the text, which indicates that they were printed after Jewett’s two-volume edition, or after British editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Transatlantic collaborations, borrowings, or piracies can indeed be traced in some of these editions. Lupton’s incomplete edition of the novel used British spelling, as did an undated edition published by Grosset and Dunlap.30 Illustrations too continued to circulate between Europe and the United States. Marketing Strategies Because of the fierce competition between so many editions, publishers had to find a means to differentiate their own editions from their rivals’, an especially arduous task when the same plates were used. This was achieved by the choice of price, format, binding and paratextual material. To a certain extent the strategy was effective: viewing many of these editions at the same time suggests a multiplicity of books, of all sizes and formats, a multi-colored display of great variety. Only upon close examination does today’s researcher realize that many of these editions are actually quite alike, at least as concerns the text proper. The vast majority of the editions were cloth bound, a telling sign of the growing disaffection for paper wrappers in the late nineteenth century.31 Whether bound in cloth or paper, however—some publishers offered the same edition in both paper and cloth—most editions were cheap, and price was a major selling point in the publishers’ catalogues and advertisements. Paper-covered volumes, often distributed by mail, might cost as little as 10 cents but generally ranged from 25 to 50 cents; cloth-bound books varied greatly in prices, from 25 cents to over a dollar. Whatever the price and the cover, when he opened the book, the customer would likely find a perfect example of what Publishers’ Weekly called “Sloppy Editions.”32 Beautiful bindings 30 Conversely, an 1898 edition published in London by James Bowden, is strikingly similar to an edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin issued by Thomas Y. Crowell (New York, c. 1897); it uses American spelling and the same frontispiece by American artist Charles Copeland. 31 See Frank L. Shick, The Paperbound Book in America, pp. 57–60. It is also possible that other paper-bound editions were published, wore out, or were deemed unworthy of preserving. More such editions may one day resurface. 32 “Sloppy Editions,” PW, 6 January 1894: 11.


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often proved deceitful, for the text often turned out to be poorly printed. Tiny print, for instance, was too faint or too dark and often on mediocre-quality paper. The Arm Chair Library’s front-cover invitation into an orderly middle-class world was severely undercut by such cheap printing, although the addition of a half-dozen illustrations may have proved comforting to the contemporary reader. Ogilvie’s “Special Theatre Edition” was both hard on the eyes, with little room left for the text to breathe on the page, and somewhat misleading—its title page announced “original illustrations by George Cruikshank, the Famous English Artist.” The illustrations, which had indeed been original when they first appeared in an English edition published by John Cassell in 1852, were quite dark. The novel itself was incomplete, but no mention of this was made. In short, the edition showed little respect for the text, or for the reader. Yet the publisher’s “This book is the property of …” printed on the front cover, was duly followed by the owner’s name, a sign that in spite of its cheapness, both in terms of price and manufacture, the volume was valued by its owner.33 To entice customers, publishers resorted to a battery of tactics. Beyond the careful selection of the titles, the “uniform” paper or cloth binding of a particular series would allow customers to grace their shelves with a collection of similar-looking books, providing both food for the intellect and decoration for the home. Publishers also emphasized the low price and the quality manufacturing of the books, often in spite of material evidence to the contrary: “The most attractive books ever offered at the price,” said the American News Company of its 25-cent paper-bound “Favorite Library”; Hurst touted the merits of its “New Argyle Series of Popular Authors,” “wonderfully good and attractive editions, for the price, of a series of books which sell, literally, by the million.” The caveat, “for the price,” would have been honest had it not been followed by the words “good type, on fair paper,” which were in fact applied to one of the poorest editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin produced during that period. The type was extremely small, the text filled the entire page, occasionally slanting left or right, the print was blotched, sometimes too dark, sometimes faded. Adequate lighting or good glasses were evidently required for the purchaser of this particular edition, cloth-bound and priced at 30 cents. On the other hand, the book did have a pretty cover, and was ornamented with a portrait of the author and a few illustrations. Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin ran the gamut from especially shoddy editions to particularly well-made ones. Burt’s “Home Library” was, for one, “printed from large type on good paper,” and the volume did not belie the publisher’s description; Crowell’s editions of Stowe’s novel were also finely crafted, and featured neat, legible type.34 Bindings were carefully detailed in journals such as the Publishers’ Trade List Annual, indicating the importance that publishers assigned to the material aspect of 33 This was the case with many of these cheap editions, which carried the name of their owner or an inscription hinting that the book had been presented as a gift. 34 Hurst was notorious for poor quality editions (David S. Edelstein, “Hurst and Company,” pp. 167–72, in Stern, Publishers for Mass Entertainment); Crowell, on the other hand, was not a publisher of cheap books, although he issued some books at low prices (Tebbel, A History of Book Publishing, vol. 2, pp. 365–9).

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the book, all of course in order to attract buyers. Indeed, most of the cloth covers demonstrate an effort to be aesthetically pleasing, with attention paid to colors, designs, and materials, as if in an effort to counteract the often poor printing inside the covers. The small format and portability of some editions were stressed in their name (Donohue and Henneberry’s “Handy Volume Classics,” for instance), in publisher’s advertisements, or in catalogues within the volumes. J.H. Sears insisted that his “Reader’s Library” volumes “are easily held in the hand. They go naturally into the pocket.”35 Other publishers advertised their editions as particularly well-suited for gifts, sometimes emphasizing the fact that they were manufactured using the latest technological developments. The New York firm of Merrill & Baker, for instance, advertised their “Celluloid Series,” which they claimed was “attractively attired in celluloid bindings.” For the sum of $1, a customer could purchase Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a volume hand-decorated in gold, “just the thing for a little remembrance to a dear friend.”36 Publishers sometimes resorted to still other gimmicks, to lend additional seductive power to a particular series. In 1896, for instance, Caldwell announced a series of two-volume sets of popular and standard works in “unusual and interesting combinations.” Washington Irving’s The Alhambra was to be paired with George Eliot’s Romola. Uncle Tom’s Cabin would appear together with The Scarlet Letter. The publisher may have deemed the combination insufficiently striking, for when that particular edition came out, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was issued in the same set as William M. Pratt’s dramatization of Ten Nights in a Bar-Room, a popular, and sensational, temperance tale by Timothy Shay Arthur, first published in 1854.37 Unsurprisingly, most popular editions issued at the time carried little paratextual material beyond Stowe’s preface to the first edition and the occasional illustration. The similar edition brought out under the various imprints of Neely, Hurst, Lupton and the Federal Book Company included a short unsigned biography, which in three of the volumes was announced on the front cover or the title page, and evidently meant to add distinction to the edition. The biography jumped from one topic to another, as if its author had collected information at random and assembled it without caring for transitions or, for that matter, facts. Indeed, the text opened by misstating Stowe’s birth date, given as 1812, a frequent error in British and French editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.38 Readers were informed that, when she lived in Cincinnati, Stowe had seen much of the slave-trade, “which fitted her for the work of writing on anti-slavery.” The 35 This particular edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York, J.H. Sears, c. 1923) was all the more portable inasmuch as the text had been considerably abridged, a fact which the editor’s note in the volume failed to mention. 36 PW, 26 September 1896, advertisement for Merrill and Baker. Other works in the series included Alice in Wonderland, The Scarlet Letter, and Bacon’s Essays. 37 PW, 26 September 1896: 398. 38 Much of the biographical information in the British and French editions seems to derive from the same source, a November 1852 article entitled “Some Account of Mrs. Beecher Stowe and her Family, by an Alabama Man,” published in Fraser’s Magazine. However, PW was to reiterate the mistake in its obituary of Stowe (4 July 1896: 17).


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success of her first novel was briefly evoked, some of her other works listed, and the biography ended on the remark that “The subject of this sketch has since resided at Hartford, Conn.” When Hurst issued an edition bearing a 1901 edition copyright, this was of course no longer true; the publisher reprinted the biographical notice verbatim from earlier editions, another sign that these popular editions often received cursory attention from their producers. Illustrations Illustrations, a key element of paratext as well as marketing strategies, were relatively scarce, and rarely in color, in cheap editions, and for obvious reasons. Publishers recycled the same illustrations in their different collections, and identical illustrations were found in editions bearing the imprints of different publishers. Front covers usually illustrated a series, not a title; the cover of Home Book’s “Hearthstone Edition” of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, for instance, shows a young woman picking flowers. A rare exception was Lupton’s Chimney Corner series, which offered an illustrated front cover depicting Tom and his family in front of their log cabin (Figure 9). The Cleveland firm of Arthur Westbrook, which printed paperback romances, detective stories, and Horatio Alger tales, chose for its front cover the color portrait of an elderly bearded Uncle Tom wearing glasses, extremely well-dressed, reading a costly gilt-edged Bible while Eva struck an absorbed and dreamy pose. Uncle Tom looked both benign and somewhat pompous (Figure 10).39 In many of the cheap editions, Tom was represented as an old man, which is how contemporary culture continued to portray him. In the frontispiece of Federal Book’s undated edition (Figure 11), Tom stands on his doorstep while Eliza warns him that he has just been sold. A comparison with the first illustration of that scene by Billings in 1852 shows that Tom has aged considerably. This is almost certainly owing to the theatrical adaptations of the novel, whose images of Uncle Tom influenced the editions, both directly and indirectly. Two editions drew upon Tom-shows for illustrations. R.R. Fenno used a mixture of engravings and photographs from an Uncle Tom play in an edition copyrighted in 1904. Uncle Tom was old and white-haired.40 Grosset and Dunlap also employed the photograph of an elderly Uncle Tom on the front cover medallion of an undated edition. That such shows affected the public perception of Uncle Tom in this way is hardly surprising. In 1879, the New York Dramatic Mirror listed the routes of 49 traveling Tom show companies. The number had increased nearly tenfold by the 1890s, the decade in which the popularity of Tom shows peaked. As Francis Pendleton Gaines put it in a 1926 introduction to the 39 Undated edition, vi, 452 p., probably issued in the first two decades of the twentieth century. The picture was used as a frontispiece to a similar edition, also undated, published by Hurst. 40 The play was a 1901 revival by the William A. Brady Company at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (See “Uncle Tom’s Cabin on Stage,” at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/onstage/oshp. html).

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novel, “Stock companies have covered the North like locusts.”41 Changes in Tom shows were reflected in illustrations.42 Although the description of Eliza’s crossing the Ohio on blocks of ice (Chapter 7) did not include any dogs, Jay Rial’s company began adding dogs in the scene in 1879; the actress playing Eliza would carry raw meat in her shawl to make the dogs more eager in their pursuit. For economic reasons the meat was replaced by dog biscuits, and in 1881 10 Siberian bloodhounds were introduced.43 Other companies followed suit, and artists came to rely on the theatrical adaptations of the novel rather than on the novel itself in devising their illustrations. One result was the inclusion of fierce dogs in the scene depicted in an undated edition published by Hurst (Figure 12).44 Movie adaptations also influenced the novel, in an early example of the tie-in phenomenon. When in 1927, Universal released Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Grosset and Dunlap brought out a new edition of the novel, featuring stills from the movie. They used the same plates employed for a previous edition bearing their imprint, plates originating from an American Publishers’ Corporation late 1890s edition. Grosset and Dunlap’s late 1920s edition of the novel provides what is perhaps the most intriguing insight into the status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin at a time when the work was reprinted less often than in the recent past. The blurb on the dust jacket of this heavy, cloth-covered volume, paradoxically invited readers to purchase the book in order to appreciate the movie better (“Your favorite Pictures will mean so much more to you if you have read the BOOKS FROM WHICH THEY WERE MADE”). Uncle Tom’s Cabin was as usual described as a work of considerable importance in the anti-slavery fight as well as a permanent bestseller. The characters were, however, reduced to clichés: “Faithful old Uncle Tom, little Eva to whom he was devoted, Eliza of the ice cakes, brutal Simon Legree, Topsy the girl who ‘just grew’—they are all part of our heritage.” This reductive vision had been inscribed in the popular imagery through years of

41 F.P. Gaines, “Introduction,” p. xii (Macmillan edition). By the end of the nineteenth century, Tom shows were finally accepted in much of the South. True, the play had little in common with the original novel. It borrowed much from minstrel shows, and “did not cause audiences to reflect on the meaning of slavery or the role of free blacks in society” (Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, p. 376). 42 The illustrations of the “Memorial” editions were in general more faithful to the text. Yet, the frontispiece of the “Art Memorial Edition” presented the readers with the unmistakable portrait of an Uncle Tom in blackface. In the other memorial edition, Swedish artist Jenny Nystrom-Stoopendaal seems to have derived much of her inspiration from the British illustrations used in the 1879 edition. Appleton’s edition featured eight illustrations. Photogravures included Stowe’s house in Brunswick, the Levee at Baton Rouge, and a planter’s home. It was more surprising to find in the same edition a very good quality reproduction of a miniature from a Book of Hours, which may have been included to promote one of the publisher’s series of art books. 43 See Harry Birdoff, The World’s Greatest Hit, chapters 14 and 15, and Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, chapter 19. 44 Hurst and Co., undated, vi.

Figure 9


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Front Cover, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, The Chimney Corner Series (New York, F.M. Lupton, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center

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Figure 10 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, color front cover (Cleveland, Arthur Westbrook, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center


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Figure 11 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, frontispiece (New York, The Federal Book Company, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center theatrical and movie adaptations.45 If many illustrated editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin offered representations of the characters at odds with their textual models, Grosset and Dunlap’s edition marked a new stage in the historical process of distortion by presenting photographs which told a story substantially different from that of the text itself. The contemporary reader, accustomed to Tom shows, may not have been overly surprised to see ferocious dogs pursuing Eliza or an aged and bespectacled Uncle Tom. But how might such a reader react to find movie stills that showed the happy reunion of George, Eliza, and Harry in the Union lines during the Civil War?46

45 Early

adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin are discussed in Birdoff and Gossett. edition dated 1928 also used stills from the movie, but was more consistent as the text followed the film’s scenario. Les grands romans filmés. La Case de l’Oncle Tom, Grand Roman d’amour et d’aventures, d’après le film Universal, tiré de l’œuvre célèbre de Mrs Beecher Stowe (Paris, Editions de Mon Ciné, 1928). 46 A French

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Figure 12 Uncle Tom’s Cabin, color illustration (New York, Hurst, undated). Courtesy Harriet Beecher Stowe Center


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Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Advertising Uncle Tom’s Cabin was increasingly used in the service of marketing in the late nineteenth century, a phenomenon which would peak in the following decades, and took three different forms: 1) editions of the work carried advertisements or 2) were offered as a premium for the purchase of other products, and 3) the novel and its characters were used to advertise various goods. Some of the cheap paper-covered editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin carried advertisements for products other than books. The back of the title page of J.S. Ogilvie’s “Special Theater Edition” advertised “Murine Eye Remedy to refresh, cleanse and strengthen the eye,” a remedy touted as especially suitable to relieve eye strain, a point which might have come as an ironic commentary on the hardly-legible print of the volume in which the advertisement was printed. The “Popular Library” edition issued by F. Tennyson Neely in 1893 and its 1894 reprint literally surrounded the text with advertisements, which started at the back of the front cover, resumed after the last page of the text, and mixed advertisements for the publisher’s books and for a wide range of products, from miracle drugs (“Hamlin’s wizard oil cures all aches, pains, soreness, swelling and inflammation […] from any cause”) to food, hats, hotels, and railroad lines among other items. The Chicago publisher had evidently targeted companies of local interest. “Burglars outwitted!” invited readers to take heed of a new door fastener sold by a Chicago firm. The Chicago Saturday Evening Herald (“The Journal of Polite Society”) also bought advertising space in this edition; so too the Chicago Fire Insurance Company, as well as a hotel conveniently located near the World Columbian Exposition, and the National War Museum in Chicago’s Libby Prison. An advertisement for the Northern Pacific Railroad invited readers to invest in the area along its route: “The cities along its line are laid out on a broad, comprehensive plan, are progressive, peopled by a refined, cultivated, energetic population, and bear the stamp of future growth, wealth, and permanence.” The Denver and Rio Grande Railroad assured readers that seeing the area in any other way was “like seeing the play of Hamlet with Hamlet left out.” Beyond the typical boosterism of the West (even if it was more commonly carried out in newspapers and other ephemerals), and the reflections on interests and concerns of the target audience—local rather than national—the presence of the advertisements changed the nature of the book. They made the slim paper-covered volume resemble a magazine, and transformed the text into a pretext for the advertisements which subsidized its publication.47 That book advertisements and trade advertisements existed in the same space defined books as a product like any other. The reader became a potential consumer. 47 This is somewhat reminiscent of the publication Uncle Tom’s Cabin in parts, or numbers, in England in 1852. Each number of Cassell’s edition in thirteen installments (London, John Cassell, illustrations by George Cruikshank, 1852) ended with advertisements for books but also coffee and tea, perhaps not so surprising since Cassell was also a tea and coffee merchant. Another British edition of Stowe’s novel in six penny numbers carried advertisements directed at emigrants and especially gold diggers (London, G. Vickers, 1852).

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At times, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was used as a premium to promote the sale of a particular product. In 1894, an Ohio company offered two items in return for so many large “Lion Heads” cut from “Lion Coffee” wrappers. The first item, a pocket knife, was primarily intended for men and boys; the second was a 500-page edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, with a biography of the author. The pocket knife must have been more costly to manufacture than the book, since more proofs of purchase were required to obtain it. The novel’s presentation was concise: “Everyone has heard of this famous novel, said to have had the largest sale of any book published, excepting the Bible.”48 The book was evidently deemed popular enough to encourage purchases of Lion Coffee, yet this premium card also hinted at a possible loss of status of Stowe’s novel, and of books in general. This particular concern was often voiced in the contemporary press, which rued the poor manufacture of the books while worrying that the low price of books might make cause them to lose value in the eyes of the public.49 The names of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and of its various characters were also attached to a series of consumer goods, which they in turn helped advertise and promote from the late 1890s and early 1900s. One could therefore buy “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Smoking Tobacco,” “Topsy Tobacco,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin Fine Granulated” (sugar), “Uncle Tom Health Food,” “Uncle Tom” and “Topsy” brooms, and more. These products relied on a stereotyped vision of African Americans. Tobacco labels had pictured happy singing and dancing slaves in the antebellum period, then depicted satisfied black sharecroppers late in the nineteenth century.50 Like the smiling Aunt Jemima, the happy Gold Dust Twins, the grinning Uncle Remus on syrup cans, these pictures told white consumers that blacks were happy to serve and generally pleased with their condition, while at the same time comforting poor whites that they were superior to African Americans.51 Uncle Tom and Topsy served similar aims. Uncle Tom was 48 See “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Advertising,” at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/tomituds/ toadsf.html. The University of Virginia Library holds a late nineteenth- or early twentieth-century copy which probably obeyed the same principle: it is a paper-covered edition produced by C.I. Hood and Co., Proprietors of Hood’s Sarsaparilla; the text is followed with advertisements (information from the library’s catalog), and the book may well have been given out as a premium. 49 See, for instance, the “Editor’s Drawer,” in Harper’s Monthly, October 1886: 807. See also “Will Cheapening Pay?” in PW, 20 January 1894: 58: the answer naturally was negative and the author mentioned the vast overproduction of cheap books sold below their production cost, a number of volumes he estimated at over five million in 1893; as a result of this unfortunate experiment, books lost much of their value in readers’ minds, sixteen houses failed, and more failures were expected. Although no mention of it was made in this article, the 1893 economic crisis also played a part in these failures. 50 Two of these tobacco labels are reprinted in James O. Horton and Lois E. Horton (eds), A History of the African American People (Detroit, Wayne University Press, 1997, 1st edn 1995), pp. 71 and 97. 51 For examples and interpretations of these objects, see Janette Faulkner, Ethnic Notions: Black Images in the White Mind: An Exhibition of Racist Stereotype and Caricature from the Collection of Janette Faulkner (Berkeley, CA, Berkeley Art Center, 2000).


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always reassuringly old, that is, non-threatening, with a crown of white hair, Tom and Topsy always spoke in “bad” English, as did Aunt Jemima. An advertising card, with a portrait of Topsy on the back, touted black thread and ensured buyers that the color wouldn’t wash off, an argument reminiscent of the many contemporary advertisements for Pears’ soap, which equated blackness with dirt.52 In 1893, the subscribers of the Critic ranked Uncle Tom’s Cabin number four of the 10 best American books. Emerson’s Essays headed the list, followed by The Scarlet Letter and Longfellow’s Poems. Uncle Tom’s Cabin preceded Holmes’s Autocrat, Irving’s Sketch-Book, Lowell’s Poems, Whittier’s poetry, Wallace’s Ben Hur, and Motley’s Dutch Republic53 The vote was an acknowledgement of the literary excellence of the Houghton, Mifflin list: of the 10 authors, only Washington Irving, Lew Wallace, and John Lothrop Motley belonged to other publishers. It also indicated the elevated status occupied by Stowe’s first novel in the hierarchy of American literature. In the years that followed, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became a product, clothed in different packagings, recycled in all kinds of ways, and used to advertise other consumer goods. The devaluation of the novel, through cheap editions, Tom shows, the use of distorted images in advertising—which must be understood within the context of the degraded image of African Americans at the time—certainly played no inconsiderable role in the negative critical assessment of the work that was to follow.

52 For Pears’ Soap and similar advertisements, see, among others, Susanne Everett, History of Slavery (Edison, New Jersey, Chartwell Books, 1999), pp. 230–32. On turn-of-the-century advertising, see Ellen Gruber Garvey, The Adman in the Parlor: Magazines and the Gendering of Consumer Culture, 1880s to 1910s (New York, Oxford University Press, 1996). 53 “Journalistic Notes,” PW, 3 June 1893: 849.


Chapter 8

Eclipse and Renaissance: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1930–2002 Uncle Tom’s Cabin underwent a prolonged eclipse during the tumultuous decades that witnessed the Depression, the Second World War, and the beginning of the Cold War. Fewer than 10 new editions were issued between 1930 and 1959. The year 1960, however, marked a new turning-point in the checkered career of the novel. At least 15 new editions appeared in the 1960s, and each of the two following decades saw the publication of over half-a-dozen new editions. New editions numbered almost twenty in the 1990s, and over a dozen have been issued in the first five years of the twenty-first century. This chapter addresses the changing fortunes of Stowe’s novel since 1930. I

Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1930–1959: A Prolonged Eclipse

Signs of Disaffection “Uncle Tom is Dead,” announced a January 1931 article in the Theatre Guild Magazine. For the first time in decades, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not being staged anywhere in the United States. The novel was also falling into neglect. In the 1930s, scholar Edward Wagenknecht suggested that a publisher bring out an edition of the novel for which he would write an introduction. The publisher turned him down, “horrified by the idea,” Wagenknecht claimed, “of adding such a cheap book to his exclusive list.” Although the economic crisis certainly played a part in the decreasing number of editions, at least in the 1930s, signs of a loss of interest in Stowe’s first novel were already perceptible in the 1920s. Few editions had come out that decade and, of the two editions issued in 1929, one was an abridged version that seems merely a pretext for the illustrations by James Daugherty.

Elizabeth Corbett, “Uncle Tom is Dead,” Theatre Guild Magazine, January 1931: 16–20. In 1933, two years after the obituary for the play, it was revived as a musical in a Players Club production, starring actor Otis Skinner. The publishing house of A.L. Burt, which had in the past issued several editions of the novel, took advantage of the revival to bring out an edition from old plates, with a frontispiece photograph signed by Skinner. Edward Wagenknecht, Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Known and the Unknown (Oxford University Press, 1965), p. 3.

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Almost 10 years later, the Limited Editions Club included Uncle Tom’s Cabin in its list of world classics. The novel was introduced by Raymond Weaver, a Columbia University professor, and illustrated with 16 lithographs by Mexican-born artist Miguel Covarrubias. Limited to 1500 copies and priced at $10, the luxury edition was aimed at the bibliophile members of the club. For Edward Larocque Tinker, who reviewed the edition for The New York Times Book Review, the type and binding had been cleverly selected to resurrect the style of the novel’s initial publication, and were thus perfectly adapted to a text that Tinker deemed “irrevocably dated.” Tinker, however, was critical of the illustrations, which he deemed too sophisticated, with “a tonguein-the-cheek quality that is totally at loggerheads with the text and that caricatures the fervent emotion of Harriet Beecher Stowe ….” Weaver, an authority on Melville, devoted much of his introduction to opposing two classic novels of 1851, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Moby Dick, highlighting the contrast between Stowe’s success and Melville’s obscurity. Weaver allowed Melville the last word in this introduction, which presented Stowe’s novel as so old-fashioned as to be hardly readable to the 1930s public. The contradiction between the editorial paratext—a carefully manufactured finely-bound edition of classics—and the allographic paratext was to appear even more blatantly in the 1948 Modern Library edition, which used Weaver’s introduction, only altering the position of some of the paragraphs. This time, the introduction closed with an anecdote first recounted by Annie Fields in the late nineteenth century. Toward the end of her life, Stowe told an old sea captain that she did not write the novel: “God wrote it. I merely did His dictation.” To the contemporary reader, this was just as damning as the ending of the 1938 introduction, with the apparent pretention of Stowe’s remark standing in marked contrast to Melville’s creative pangs and the image of a tortured artist, much more understandable to a twentieth-century audience. The jacket copy placed the accent on the historical influence of the novel which, as in the introduction, found its best expression in Lincoln’s greeting to Stowe during the Civil War, “So, you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!” Yet while Weaver basically advised his audience to read Moby Dick rather than Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the publisher’s blurb more logically promoted Stowe’s novel as one of the “Best of

Edward Larocque Tinker, “New Editions,” The New York Times Book Review, 16 January 1938: 26. For Paul C. Gutjahr, on the other hand, Covarrubias uses Uncle Tom’s Cabin to make a political statement and denounce the oppression of African Americans decades after Emancipation (“Pictures of Slavery in the United States,” pp. 77–92 in E. Ammons and S. Belasco (eds), Approaches to Teaching Uncle Tom’s Cabin). Annie Fields, Life and Letters, p. 377. The anecdote was first reported by Annie Fields, in Life and Letters, p. 269. It made its first appearance in the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin with Weaver’s introduction. Publishers and preface writers were to use it systematically in subsequent editions, with variations in the formulation.

Eclipse and Renaissance: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1930–2002

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the World’s Best Books.” The contradiction could well have left the buyer of the edition feeling puzzled, and led him/her to approach the text with caution, or at least with mixed feelings. More sympathetic, but also liable to raise doubts about the quality of the text, was Charles Angoff’s introduction to the 1957 Fine Editions Press. He clearly listed the novel’s flaws: “blemishes of craftsmanship,” “preachments,” “bathos,” “little skill in common sentence structure.” Yet, Angoff noted, the novel had enduring appeal, which could only be accounted for by the intense emotion communicated to the reader. A very different note was struck by Langston Hughes, the first African-American writer of an introduction to the novel. In 1952, the house of Dodd, Mead and Co. commemorated the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in book format by issuing an edition of the novel in its Great Illustrated Classics collection. The collection blurb stressed both the “timeless quality” of the titles selected, the large, readable type, and the illustrations and introductions which provided the “fascinating background of the author, his works and his era.” The list of writers included in the collection was not unlike that of many of the series issued at the end of the nineteenth century (Dickens, Cooper, Wallace, Scott, Irving, Dumas, and so on). The frontispiece, a portrait of the author, was followed by a few lines from the sonnet “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” in which African-American poet and writer Paul Laurence Dunbar celebrated Stowe as the woman who had unveiled the horrors of slavery to the eyes of the world. The introduction by Langston Hughes recommended Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an historically important document—“a moral battle cry”—but also as a good story, with an exciting narrative, sharp characterization, humor and emotion, all qualities which had kept it alive for a hundred years. Hughes insisted that the reader make the distinction between the novel and its distorted theatrical adaptations. Although Hughes focused on theatrical adaptations, the preceding decades had seen further metamorphoses of Stowe’s novel, which became number 15 of the Classics Illustrated comic book series in 1944. In magazine format, the edition highlighted the most dramatic moments of the novel, while reducing its religious content to angels hovering above Eva’s deathbed. The inclusion of Uncle Tom’s Cabin next to Tolstoy,

The Modern Library aimed to become the American equivalent of the British Everyman’s Library. Advertisements for the Modern Library touted the choice of works, the portability and affordability of the editions, as well as their careful manufacture. For a history of the Modern Library, see Jay Satterfield, The World’s Best Books: Taste, Culture, and the Modern Library (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 2002). The introduction may, however, have been deemed unreliable by some readers: Angoff (a professor and writer, he succeeded H.L. Mencken in 1933 as the top editor of the American Mercury) listed Little Nell (Dickens) among the characters of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The list failed to include Melville and, rather than Moby Dick, offered Frank Bullen’s The Cruise of the Cachalot (1898). Originally published in The Century Magazine (November 1898), reprinted in the 1994 Norton Critical Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, p. 490.

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Twain, Dickens, and Shakespeare confirmed the status of the novel as a classic, but the form in which it was published conveyed a reductive image of the work.10 We have no way of knowing what influence these different presentations of the text exerted on contemporary readers. The editions targeted different audiences, yet they all inscribed Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a world classic. Introductions, however, sometimes denied the text the very label (classic) that the editorial paratext emphasized. Modern Library readers may have been put off from taking hold of a book the preface writer deemed unreadable; conversely, Langston Hughes encouraged them to enjoy a good story. The Status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, 1930s to the End of the 1950s Beyond the editions themselves, ample evidence suggests that from the 1930s on, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was deemed significant from an historical point of view but negligible from a purely literary one. In 1933, the Christian Science Monitor reported on a recent poll by the National Council of Women and The Ladies’ Home Journal to determine the 12 greatest women leaders in the United States over the past 100 years. Stowe ranked seventh because, while Uncle Tom’s Cabin “wasn’t a very good book” from a literary standpoint, it was as much a part of the abolition of slavery as the Civil War or the Emancipation Proclamation. The novel was conspicuously absent from the list of the 50 best books in American literature compiled the following year by Edward Weeks for Publishers’ Weekly.11 At a time when the American canon was being defined, literary scholarship frequently dismissed Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and nineteenth-century women writers generally. All were faulted for their sentimentalism, lack of realism and humor. In F.O. Matthiessen’s influential American Renaissance, Stowe appeared only in passing remarks, generally in footnotes, a position which fully revealed the depreciation in the literary assessment of her work.12 Many critics concurred with Stark Young that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was “excessively dated,” or, as David Dempsey put it, “a soap opera with a message,” a work which belonged, according to Stowe biographer Catherine Gilbertson, “to folklore.”13 10 This collection evidently targeted young readers, but it is not impossible that adults may have read them. Acclaim Books began reprinting them in the 1990s as study guides, with scholarly essays. 11 “Power of ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ Won Author World Renown,” Christian Science Monitor, 21 January 1933; Edward Weeks (writer and editor of The Atlantic Monthly), “A Modern Estimate of the Fifty Best Books in American Literature,” PW, 21 April 1934: 1507. 12 See Jay Hubbel (ed.), American Life in Literature, Revised Edition (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1949, 1st edn 1936), and F.O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (New York, Oxford University Press, 1968, 1st edn 1941). 13 Stark Young (a critic and novelist), “Gentle Mrs. Stowe,” The New Republic, 22 March 1943: 381–2; David Dempsey (a writer and critic), “‘Uncle Tom,’ Centenarian,” The New York Times Magazine, 3 June 1951: 55–6; Catherine P. Gilbertson, Harriet Beecher Stowe (New York, Appleton-Century, 1937), p. 165.


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The various adaptations produced during these three decades did nothing to restore the status of the novel. Lloyd Bacon’s 1934 movie Wonder Bar, starring Al Jolson, took viewers to a black paradise replete with watermelons, hams, chickens, and cigars, in which a very old Uncle Tom frolicked with his “cabin show.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin also served as the basis for several cartoons in the 1930s and 1940s. In a Jungle Jinks cartoon, for example, slaves picked cotton for fun, and continued singing and dancing on the auction block. In another, Mighty Mouse came to the rescue of Eliza.14 While testifying to the vitality of the characters created by Stowe, these mutations played their part in contributing to the debased image of the novel. Advertisements sometimes pointed out that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was clearly passé. “Was your present watch in style when ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ came to town?” asked a 1927 advertisement for watches in The Ladies’ Home Journal. Below an illustration showing customers buying tickets for a performance of the play, the text explained that an old watch could well be cherished by its owner, but that in the eyes of others it was just “an anachronism.”15 While the novel was still used to advertise a variety of products, from desserts to root beer or fountain pens, the focus on the novel’s popularity or the money it had earned its author sometimes hinted at its diminished literary status. Around 1933, the Girard Trust Company of Philadelphia made Stowe the central figure in one of its 12-page booklets on the careers of famous American women. Stowe’s life and works were detailed, and special emphasis was laid on Uncle Tom’s Cabin in order to explain the roots of Stowe’s constant financial problems: “Had she known of the Trust Company,” the advertisement suggested, Stowe would have relied on agents to manage her income and secure the dramatic rights of the book. The J. Walter Thompson Company was more explicit in 1934 when it used Uncle Tom’s Cabin, together with a few illustrations from the 1879 edition, to tout itself as a leading advertising agency: “If Uncle Tom’s Cabin is not a great literary work, at least it is the shrewdest piece of selling ever written.” The copywriter then proceeded to list the successful methods employed by Stowe: she had associated her “product” with an idea (freedom) and had given it an emotional expression. The novel certainly lacked literary qualities (“no author since has been willing to be so inartistic—so devastatingly common and understandable”), but it was effective. J. Walter Thompson engaged to follow the same recipe in the advertisements it would create for its customers.16 14 Uncle Tom and Little Eva, Jungle Jinks Cartoons, undated; Eliza on Ice, Castle Films, Terry Toon Cartoons, 1944; Tex Avery also adapted Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Uncle Tom’s Bungalow (1937) and Uncle Tom’s Cabana (1947); these cartoons were often reminiscent of minstrel shows, and frequently, like the movie Wonder Bar, resorted to stereotypes inherited from the nineteenth century. In Rodgers and Hammerstein’s 1951 Broadway musical The King and I, the ballet, “The Small House of Uncle Thomas,” also encouraged a folkloric vision of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. 15 The Ladies’ Home Journal, September 1927, UVa web. 16 See note 48 in Chapter 7, for examples of uses of the novel in advertising. The Girard Trust Company booklet (“The Book of Emancipation and Harriet Beecher Stowe” [Philadelphia,

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Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Racism The attempt by Langston Hughes to rehabilitate Uncle Tom’s Cabin is all the more striking as it came at a time when the novel was increasingly described as racist. Because the work had played a considerable role in the debate over slavery, African Americans had long hesitated to criticize it openly, even if many had voiced reservations from the day of its publication.17 From the 1930s on, however, both black and white intellectuals overtly rejected it as racist. Richard Wright’s Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) clearly pointed to the need for a rewriting of Stowe’s novel, while Bigger Thomas of Native Son (1940) could hardly be more different than Uncle Tom. While James Baldwin labeled both Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Wright’s Native Son “protest novels” in his scathing 1949 article “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” the writer dismissed Stowe’s novel as “a very bad novel” and a racist one.18 Three years earlier, Brion Gysin had accused Stowe of having robbed Josiah Henson of his name and his personality in order to create Uncle Tom. In To Master—A Long Goodbye, Gysin described with bitter irony the “masochistic anticipation” of the reader as he followed the lives of the story’s villains; as for the victims, they “were given a recommendation which read, ‘Good for Repayment in Heaven.’” Gysin concluded, “It will be a great day when we can shout together, ‘Uncle Tom is dead.’”19 The harshest criticism of the 1930–1960 period was, however, voiced by white journalist and writer J.C. Furnas. In Goodbye to Uncle Tom, Furnas claimed that, far from freeing blacks, Stowe had created damaging stereotypes: “The devil could have forged no shrewder weapon [than Uncle Tom’s Cabin] for the Negro’s worst enemy.”20 Uncle Tom’s Cabin was rejected on all sides for differing reasons: in the Girard Trust Company, c. 1933]) can be found in the Authors Collection, Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College; the advertisement for J. Walter Thompson appeared in Fortune, December 1934, UVa web. 17 See Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, Chapters 10 and 18; in 1916, historian and literary critic Benjamin Brawley claimed that the era of Uncle Tom and Uncle Remus was over; the rebellion against such images of African Americans in literature developed in the following decades among black and white critics: Seymour L. Gross and John Edward Hardy (eds), Images of the Negro in American Literature (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 8–9. 18 James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel,” Partisan Review 16 (June 1949), reprinted in the 1994 Norton Critical Edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, pp. 495–501. 19 Bryon Gysin, To Master—A Long Goodnight: The Story of Uncle Tom, A Historical Narrative (New York, Creative Age Press, 1946), pp. 156 and 199. In Love and Death in the American Novel (New York, Criterion Books, 1960, p. 263), Leslie A. Fiedler explained that the chief pleasures of Stowe’s novel lay not in moral indignation but in “the more devious titillations of the sadist.” In his Flight to Canada (1976), Ishmael Reed also charged Stowe with having stolen Henson’s soul. 20 J.C. Furnas, Goodbye to Uncle Tom: An Analysis of the Myths Pertaining to the American Negro, from Their Origins to the Misconceptions of Today (New York, William Sloane Associates, 1956), p. 51.


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1930s, the “United Daughters of the Confederacy” successfully opposed a planned theatrical performance of the work by the Rice Institute Dramatic Club of Houston, Texas, an echo of the long-standing Southern opposition to the novel. On the other hand, in the 1940s, MGM abandoned the shooting of a movie based on Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and a performance of an adaptation of the novel was cancelled in Bridgeport, Connecticut. In each case, fear that the adaptations might run counter to interracial unity was used to justify the cancellation.21 In the general concert of negative reviews, a few voices anticipated the revaluation that would take hold in the following decade. In The Feminine Fifties, Fred Lewis Pattee noted that Uncle Tom’s Cabin still had an audience, and suggested that much of the criticism, whether positive or negative, was dictated by sectional affiliation: “geography sometimes warps the judgment of critics.” Charles H. Foster objected to Baldwin’s assessment on the grounds that Baldwin, along with much of the population, tended to confuse Stowe’s novel with its adaptations, a point which Hughes had made in the 1952 edition, and which was also emphasized by Chester E. Jorgenson, who compiled the catalogue of a 1952 exhibition at the Detroit Public Library, organized to commemorate the first appearance of the book.22 Edmund Wilson also spoke in favor of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and noted that Foster’s study was all the more welcome as serious literary criticism of the novel had until then been sadly lacking.23 In the 1930s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared to have lost much of its critical and popular appeal. It was certainly excluded from the canon of American literature then under construction by notable critics. The public that made Gone With The Wind (1936) another publishing phenomenon, or that looked to Richard Wright’s works for an explanation of the race problem in the United States, seemed to think that Stowe’s first novel was obsolete and irrelevant. The nostalgic reading of the antebellum South carried out in novels such as Margaret Mitchell’s, in movies like The Littlest Rebel (1935), and in history books left no room for Uncle Tom’s Cabin.24 Militant black intellectuals rejected it on account of its racism. The many adaptations of the novel and its use in advertising had turned the work into folklore. Yet the signs were 21 Thomas Henry Foster, America’s Most famous Book: A Dissertation on Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Uncle Tom Shows (Cedar Rapids, IA, Privately Printed for the Friends of May and Harry Foster at the Torch Press, 1947), pp. 32–3. 22 Fred Lewis Pattee, The Feminine Fifties, p. 51; Charles H. Foster, The Rungless Ladder: Harriet Beecher Stowe and New England Puritanism (Durham, Duke University Press, 1954), pp. 59–60; Chester E. Jorgenson, Uncle Tom’s Cabin as Book and Legend, p. 7; on the confusion between the novel and its adaptations, see also Helen Waite Papashvily, All the Happy Endings: A Study of the Domestic Novel in America, the Women Who Wrote It, the Women Who Read It, in the Nineteenth Century (New York, Harper and Brothers, 1956), p. 70. 23 Edmund Wilson, “No ! No ! No ! My Soul An’t Yours Mas’r,” The New Yorker, 27 November 1948: 134–41, and “Harriet Beecher Stowe,” The New Yorker, 10 September 1955: 137–53. 24 For a contemporary account of the way history books and textbooks presented slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, see W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 (New York, Harcourt Brace, 1935), chapter 17.

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contradictory: the work was still enshrined in collections of classics, and articles and even entire volumes were devoted to the novel. What’s more, people still read it. Furnas had sent out a questionnaire and found that among his respondents (most of them not Southerners) above the age of 35, three out of four had read the novel. He assessed the annual sales as at least 8,000 copies. Houghton Mifflin informed Edward Wagenknecht that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had never been out of print and that, between 1862 and 1955, the sales of their editions had exceeded a million copies. The New York Public Library was forced to purchase 40 copies of the work in 1950 to replace its worn-out volumes. 25 Uncle Tom’s Cabin was not quite dead and the following decade would disprove the warning implicit in the title of Furnas’s book, Goodbye to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. II The 1960s: Renaissance Just as the waning of Stowe’s first novel can be dated by the decline in the number of editions, the fact that more editions came out in the 1960s than in the three preceding decades clearly marks the renaissance of Stowe’s first novel. What gave new life to a novel considered obsolete and irrelevant? A first answer is provided in the collections in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin appeared in the 1960s. Almost all of them included “classics” in their titles (see Appendix 2). Although Uncle Tom’s Cabin had long been touted as a classic, the spread of the phenomenon is striking. For the first time, the novel was brought out by university presses, a sign of a new interest in the novel on the part of academia. All the editions reprinted Stowe’s preface to the first edition and four added her introduction to the 1879 edition, sometimes in an abridged form. The 1965 Oxford University Press “Classic American Texts” edition contained all of Stowe’s six introductions and prefaces to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. With only one exception, all the 1960s editions included scholarly paratext, in the form of introductions or afterwords, biographies and/or bibliographies. Several editions announced that their text was based on the original two-volume edition published by Jewett in 1852.26 The claim to textual authenticity indicated that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was seen as a significant literary work, one whose original text deserved respect as well as painstaking work to reproduce as precisely as possible. The presence of scholarly material also revealed a shift in both the status of the text—heavy paratextual accompaniment is one of the hallmarks of a classic—and the target audience: the text was deemed worthy of learned analysis by distinguished academics, as well as inclusion in college syllabi.27 As a combined result of the new target audience and the great 25 Furnas noted that two out of three of his respondents who had read the novel had taken it off the family bookshelf (Goodbye to Uncle Tom, p. 62); Wagenknecht, Harriet Beecher Stowe, note 2 p. 223; David Dempsey, “‘Uncle Tom,’ Centenarian”: 56. 26 By date of publication these are: Doubleday Dolphin Master, Harvard University Press, Harper Classics, Oxford University Press, Charles E. Merrill. 27 Robert Corrigan noted in his introduction to the 1967 Airmont Classic edition that the novel had long been scorned by literary critics, adding “Recently, however, there has been


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paperback boom which followed the Second World War, many of the editions were cheap paperbacks, devoid of illustrations save for the front cover.28 Backcover blurbs revealed the reasons for the new interest in the novel: beyond the usual claim for the historical importance of the work in the fight against slavery (“the novel that awakened the conscience of a nation” according to the Collier Books blurb), and its phenomenal popularity, the emphasis was placed on a rediscovery and reassessment of the novel, seen as an unfairly criticized masterpiece. Blurbs sought both to rehabilitate the novel and assure potential buyers that they would enjoy the story, that it was not dated. Readers were encouraged to meet the “real” Uncle Tom, as opposed to the stereotype he had become through theatrical adaptations. Most of all, backcover texts invited readers to approach Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a key to understanding the state of race relations in contemporary America.29 The most severe preface writer of the decade, historian Philip Van Doren Stern, advocated reading the book for that very reason: “Everyone interested in tracing the emergence of the present from the past should read it.”30 Unlike preceding periods, then, in which history was considered only to underscore the way in which the novel had helped shape events, blurbs in the 1960s clearly established a link between past and present. While editions of the late nineteenth century revealed a deep-seated desire to leave the past behind and obliterate bad memories, the paratext of the 1960s reinscribed the past as a painful but unavoidable component of the present. Therein lies the main reason for this spate of editions: the civil rights movement gave Uncle Tom’s Cabin a new relevance.31 Assessing the Novel: Historical and Literary Perspectives Reading the 10 new introductions and afterwords from the 1960s reveals a notable lack of consensus on almost every subject taken up by the preface writers. They

evidence of the tide turning as increasing numbers of critics and scholars have begun to pay serious attention to this novel and reassess its place in the history of American letters” (p. 9). According to him, the novel sold 21,342 copies in 1961 (p. 8). 28 On the paperback boom and the innovation that major paperback houses start issuing their own series of classics for school and college adoption, see Thomas L. Bonn, Under Cover: An Illustrated History of American Mass Market Paperbacks (Harmondsworth, England, Penguin Books, 1982), pp. 47–52 and 106–12. Front-cover illustrations varied between engravings or paintings contemporary with the novel and 1960s depictions of the characters, with wide fluctuations in Uncle Tom’s age. 29 The blurb for the Harvard University Press edition mentioned not only the “new struggle for emancipation,” but also decolonization in Africa. 30 “Introduction,” The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York, Paul S. Eriksson, 1964), p. 10. 31 In a 1966 adaptation of the novel for children, Anne Terry White explained, “It was out of a desire to make the struggle for Freedom Now grippingly understandable to boys and girls that I was moved to put Uncle Tom’s Cabin in a form acceptable to young readers”: Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Adapted for Children by Anne Terry White (New York, George Braziller, A Venture Book, 1966), pp. vii–viii.

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were all white men, most academics, more often than not historians.32 The novel was evaluated differently based on whether the writer was taking the perspective of historical import or literary worth. Whatever the point of view, however, practically all introductions took up the same subjects: the 1850s context and inception of the work, the influence of the novel on history, its popular success, as well as its literary value and the authorial strategies employed. Opinions varied over the accuracy of the portrayal of slavery in the novel, yet all preface writers regarded it as possessing documentary value, as a text which provided a panorama of nineteenth-century American society, even if the writer had erred on specific points in her description of slavery.33 Only one preface writer failed to discuss the novel’s contribution to the anti-slavery cause, and Lincoln’s aprocryphal statement was often found both on back covers and in introductions. However, for the first time in the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the impact of the novel was questioned. For historian Dwight L. Dumond, suggesting that the work brought on the war was “absurd,” even if it was indeed a “powerful catalyst.” Another historian, John William Ward, went one step further by raising the question of the power of fiction to influence historical events. He agreed that, yes, Uncle Tom’s Cabin caused people to cry over the fate of Uncle Tom, but can tears actually influence history, or, as he put it, “In what sense does a novel have the power to move a nation to battle?” The question remained unanswered but it was significant that it should have been asked.34 For some preface writers, the novel was first and foremost a historical document, which meant that aesthetic and formalist concerns could be dispensed with or settled in a few words. Van Wyck Brooks, for instance, merely noted that after a hundred years, the work remained “readable and even exciting.”35 As in the past, introductions attempted to locate the position of Uncle Tom’s Cabin within a literary hierarchy and, as in the past, this proved a difficult task. The list of qualities and defects of the novel resembled those of earlier times: on the positive side, the characterization, exciting narrative, humor and emotional power; on the down side, the double plot, sentimentality, melodrama, inelegance of style, and what Charles Angoff in his 1957 introduction called “preachments,” a judgment shared by Russell Nye, who noted that in Uncle Tom’s Cabin “the message runs away with the narrative.” 36 Accounting for the enduring popularity of the work—emphasized in all prefaces— was often perceived as a challenge, especially for those with reservations about its 32 For the introductions (nine new ones) and afterword (one), see the table of editions. The lone “outsider” in the list was Jeremy Larner, a writer and screenwriter. 33 For a more severe assessment of the historical “truth” of the novel, linked with Stowe’s ignorance of slavery, see the detailed analysis made by John A. Woods in his introduction to the Oxford University Press 1965 edition. 34 Dwight L. Dumond, introduction to the Classic Collier Books edition (1962), p. 10; John William Ward, afterword, Signet Classics edition (1966), p. 480. 35 Van Wyck Brooks, introduction to Everyman’s Library edition (1961, 1970 reprint), p. viii. 36 Russell B. Nye, introduction to the Washington Square Press edition (1963), p. xiv.


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literary quality. The circumstances of the 1850s could explain the initial success of the work. But while some preface writers interpreted the continued popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as derived from the qualities of the text, others were obviously baffled, and confessed to their inability to judge the work on literary grounds. In an echo of Henry James’s estimate of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a “wonderful leaping fish,” Jeremy Larner argued, “It’s one of those books that slips loose from generalizations,” adding, “Abstract formulations are simply inadequate to a novel that teems with characters who overrun its structural and ideological boundaries.” John William Ward noted that, “the problem is simply how a book so seemingly artless, so lacking in apparent literary talent, was not only an immediate success but has endured.” Robert Corrigan also wondered why such a technically imperfect novel had remained popular over the decades, which led him to the wider question of the criteria of literary judgment: “How do we begin to evaluate the worth of a literary product—by means of its content, that is, its theme or message, or on the basis of the technical skill exhibited in the structure of the composition? Do we judge on the basis of content or form, or by a combination of the two?” 37 In the paratextual material of the 1960s editions, opinions ran the entire gamut between moderate appreciation and complete revaluation or condemnation. Like their predecessors, some of the 1960s preface writers assigned Stowe’s first novel the rank of a minor classic. In the hierarchy of American literature, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, noted Russell Nye, stood below major works like The Scarlet Letter, Moby Dick, and Huckleberry Finn. Jeremy Larner’s gendered reading defined the novel as a “feminine style of melodrama.” By classifying Stowe’s novel as moralistic fiction, Larner also put Uncle Tom’s Cabin beyond the pale of great works.38 Howard Mumford Jones anticipated Umberto Eco’s distinction between great literature and literature that feeds the collective imagination: for Jones, Stowe’s novel could not stand on the same level as The Red Badge of Courage or Madame Bovary, two works whose unity of tone was maintained from beginning to end. Yet, it was also a “narrative masterpiece,” whose characters, like those in Ben Hur, or The Count of Monte Cristo had acquired a life of their own, independent from the book which created them.39 At one extreme on the continuum of judgment on the novel stood historian Philip Van Doren Stern’s flat condemnnation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a “poorly written novel,” which could in no way compare to contemporary masterpieces by Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, and Whitman. Effective as a “novel of social protest,” Uncle Tom’s Cabin was simply not a work of literature.40 At the other extreme, Kenneth Lynn undertook a radical revaluation of the work. He was also, not incidentally, the first of the1960s preface writers to question the established canon. He was the first too, to 37 Jeremy Larner, introduction to the Harper Classics edition (1965), p. xii; John William Ward, afterword, Signet Classics edition (1966), p. 480; Robert Corrigan, introduction to the Airmont Classics edition (1967), p. 8. 38 Jeremy Larner, introduction to the Harper Classics edition (1965), p. xii. 39 See Umberto Eco, De Superman au Surhomme (Paris, Grasset, 1993), pp. 87–8. Howard Mumford Jones, introduction to the Charles E. Merrill edition (1969). 40 Philip Van Doren Stern, introduction to the Paul S. Eriksson edition (1964), p. 11.

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refuse to discuss the popularity of the novel in connection to its literary value. This was no accident, since its popularity was systematically correlated to its literary value, or lack thereof. In the 1930s, Raymond Weaver had opposed the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the “failure” of Moby Dick, clearly hinting that Stowe’s success proved the novel’s lack of literary greatness, for a work appreciated by so many was necessarily mediocre at best. Lynn, on the other hand, chose not to enter this particular debate and, although he did broach the topic of the work’s success, he did so in a separate paratext, entitled “A History of the Text,” placed after his introduction.41 Lynn began with what he called “The shame of American literature,” that is, “the degree to which our authors of the 1830’s and 1840’s kept silent during the rising storm of debate on the slavery issue.” The writers enshrined in the American canon—Hawthorne, for instance—failed to address the most serious moral problem in the history of the nation. Minor writers demonstrated more courage, but in mediocre works. As for plantation novels, they showed slavery in a rosy light, and the peculiar institution with its sordid realities was naturally banished from domestic novels. Uncle Tom’s Cabin stood on its own. Lynn agreed that the novel was overly sentimental, that Eliza’s flight across the ice and the death of Little Eva could only be seen as “marvelous specimens of a confectionary art,” and yet he argued that Stowe’s work was different from ordinary sentimental novels: “Uncle Tom’s Cabin is the greatest tear-jerker of them all, but it is a tear-jerker with a difference: it did not permit its audience to escape reality.” In what seemed like a reply to Baldwin’s 1949 charge that in Stowe’s novel tears actually hid an absence of emotion, Lynn argued that tears encouraged the moral regeneration of the nation. By questioning the canon, by insisting on the realism of the novel, and by pointing to the Balzacian dimension of its characters, Lynn established the terms for the debate that would rage in the following decades. By hinting that Tom had been endowed with feminine qualities, Lynn also heralded future feminist readings of Stowe’s work.42 In an unusual example of consensus, preface writers agreed that the gallery of engaging, vivid, and expertly-delineated characters was one of the strong points of the novel. Among the white characters, St Clare was generally approved of, just as Eva was looked on by most preface writers as the embodiment of what Lynn called the “saccharine phoniness” of the sentimental tradition. Only Jones attempted 41

The editorial paratext of this Harvard University edition dwelled at great length on the popularity and historical influence of the novel. The limits of the impact exerted by the allographic paratext are revealed in a review of this particular edition published in the Times Literary Supplement (4 October 1963, “Uncle Tom’s Message: The Book of War and Freedom”). The author noted that this “admirable” edition allowed the reader to approach Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a genuine literary work, not a mere abolitionist tract. What the article emphasized, though, was precisely the historical significance of the novel, together with its popularity. 42 Kenneth S. Lynn, introduction to the Harvard University Press edition (1962), pp.vii, xi, x. John William Ward noted that Stowe stressed the moral influence of good women but, according to him, Stowe undercut her own strategy by having Eliza disguise herself as a man in order to flee to Canada, a sign that the patient, submissive woman was basically ineffective (afterword to the Signet Classic edition, pp. 490–91).


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to revaluate Eva, even if he was aware that she was “so incredibly good as to be ludicrous,” especially for the modern reader familiar with the very different hero of Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield.43 While white characters were usually judged by analogy with other literary characters, the evaluation of black characters took a political turn. During the heated days of the civil rights movement, Uncle Tom became something of a lightning rod for impassioned debate regarding the very history of the nation. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the Civil Rights Movement, and Rewritings of History In the 1950s, “revisionist” historians, both black and white, challenged the accepted version of slavery, the Civil War, and Reconstruction, which had been provided by U.B. Phillips and others.44 Slavery was re-read as a brutal institution; Reconstruction was still viewed as a tragic episode, no longer, however, because it subjected the South to black domination, but because it failed to achieve its promises to former slaves. As historian Eric Foner put it in 1990, “American history has been remade.”45 The new interest in black history informed many of the 1960s introductions to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, just as the ongoing civil rights movement influenced the interpretation of the novel’s characters and of Stowe’s authorial strategies. Stowe’s black characters were seen either as the stereotypical visions of a racist author (Van Doren Stern) or, conversely, as the first description of slaves that demonstrated an understanding of their defense strategies. According to Kenneth Lynn, “no American author before Mrs. Stowe had realized that the comic inefficiency of a Black Sam could constitute a studied insult to the white man’s intelligence or comprehended that the unremitting gentleness of Uncle Tom was the most stirring defiance of all.”46 Preface writers also tried to define the role played by religion during slavery: did it encourage submission, or should it be seen as another defense tactic? These questions echoed the discussions of historians in the 1960s and 1970s. John Blassingame, Nathan Huggins, Lawrence Levine, and many others looked at slave religion and culture as forms of resistance. 43 Kenneth S. Lynn, introduction to the Harvard University Press edition (1962), p. xi; Howard Mumford Jones, introduction to the Charles E. Merrill edition (1969), p. xiii. 44 For a contemporary account of what John Hope Franklin called “The New Negro History,” see his article by that title in the Crisis (February 1957), reprinted in John Hope Franklin, Race and History: Selected Essays, 1938–1988 (Baton Rouge, Louisiana State University Press, 1989). For an analysis of African-American historiography, see August Meier and Elliott Rudwick, Black History and the Historical Profession, 1915–1980 (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1986). 45 Eric Foner, The New American History (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1990), p. vii. Ironically, the blurb of the 1960 Doubleday Dolphin Master edition encouraged readers to distinguish Uncle Tom from his stereotype while touting the book as “a surprisingly sympathetic picture of pre-Civil War Southern Society,” in what seemed like a revival of the old effort to attract Southern readers by presenting Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a plantation novel. 46 Kenneth S. Lynn, introduction to the Harvard University Press edition (1962), p. xii.

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Uncle Tom took on a special significance in the debate because of the context of the civil rights movement, and the widespread use of “Uncle Tom” as a term of abuse. Alex Haley, whose Roots would be compared to Stowe’s novel in the following decade, reported in a 1964 article that an Ohio woman had won a libel suit against a black weekly for printing a “false report” that she had been called an “Uncle Tom.” An all-white jury awarded her $32,000 in damages. The suit blatantly demonstrated that “Uncle Tom” was the acknowledged symbol of a servile, cowardly African American, a traitor to his race.47 “In fact,” Robert Corrigan noted in his introduction, “almost every American Negro leader at one time or another has been called an ‘Uncle Tom’ by his more aggressive colleagues.” According to prefaces, the Uncle Tom stereotype found its source in the character created by Stowe or was seen as an unfair avatar of theatrical adaptations. For John William Ward, “fawning servility” was inscribed in the character, just as failure was the inevitable result of the strategy of submission advocated by Stowe through her hero. Jeremy Larner concurred and deemed Uncle Tom pathetic, noting that the contempt of black intellectuals for Stowe’s hero was quite understandable: “Mrs. Stowe provides small room for black dignity outside Christian submission.”48 Those preface writers who traced the stereotype to Stowe’s hero unsurprisingly dismissed the writer’s strategies as both ineffective and rooted in racism. Even if some of the preface writers refused to be drawn into the debate, it was evident that the contemporary situation, and the feeling of anxiety which it created, exerted a considerable influence on approaches to the text. Stern’s introduction is particularly significant in this regard. Echoing W.E.B. Du Bois’s famous declaration in The Souls of Black Folk—“the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line”—Stern pointed to the race issue as the major internal problem of the country, whether in the 1850s or the 1960s.49 But Stowe herself had compounded it, Stern argued, by creating stereotypes that still hurt a hundred years later, even if much was to be blamed on distorted adaptations of the novel. Like Furnas almost a decade earlier, Stern claimed that Stowe “did a great deal of harm to the cause she was so fervently espousing.” This was especially dangerous because, as Stern remarked, “everything which adds to the already unbearable tensions of this tensionridden age [the atomic age] damages our chances of staying alive.”50 Against this 47

Alex Haley, “In ‘Uncle Tom’ Are Our Guilt and Hope,” The New York Times Magazine, 1 March 1964: 23 and 90. For a contemporary comparison of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Roots, see Meg Greenfield, “Uncle Tom’s Roots,” Newsweek, 14 February 1977: 100. An evocative sample of the connotations of “Uncle Tom” in the 1960s can be found in The Black Messiahs, by Albert Cleage, Jr (New York, Sheed and Ward, 1969). Cleage advocated a more radical approach to achieve civil rights. 48 Robert A. Corrigan, introduction to the Airmont Classics edition (1967), p. 9; John William Ward, afterword, Signet Classics edition (1966), p. 492; Jeremy Larner, introduction to the Harper Classics edition (1965), p. xiii. 49 W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York, New American Library, Signet Classics, 1995, 1st edn 1903), p. 54. 50 Philip Van Doren Stern, introduction to the Paul S. Eriksson edition (1964), p. 9.


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interpretation, Jones and Lynn attempted to rehabilitate Stowe’s hero, by marking a distinction between the character and the stereotype. For each writer, Tom was far from being a coward and was, to the contrary, to quote Jones, a “splendid black Christian Prometheus.” Jones and Lynn each established a clear parallel between Uncle Tom and Martin Luther King. 51 The introductions to Uncle Tom’s Cabin speak to the new relevance the novel acquired in the 1960s. Preface writers revealed their own vision of events as much as they commented upon the novel itself, or better, introductions became an important locus for the debate carried out in American society at the time. The subjective, even polemical, tone of many prefaces indicates that the novel was often used as a pretext to address the state of contemporary America and the best strategies to employ in the civil rights movement, a kind of Martin Luther King versus Malcolm X contest.52 Some of the prefaces served as direct calls to action. Ward, for instance, stressed the need for blacks and whites to work together in order to achieve social justice. Jones advised his readers to stop expecting some outside institutional power—the government, the university—to “put into effect the charity of Jesus.”53 Beyond the disagreements between the various preface writers, and their differing points of view about the novel, the problems of American society and the best ways to address them, the emergence of topical concerns in the paratext of a novel that was already over 100 years old abundantly testified to the vitality of the work. Coda to the 1960s Editions: Contradictions While the paratexts of the 1960s fully revealed dissension to be a hallmark of the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the same decade witnessed a new intensity in the contradictions between the editorial and allographic paratexts. This is best embodied in the edition which featured an introduction and notes by Philip Van Doren Stern. The historian was, as we have seen, highly critical of the novel in his introduction, stressing both its absence of literary value and its disastrous consequences in the field of race relations; yet he also presented Uncle Tom’s Cabin as “a necessary part of one’s education.” A reader may well have been taken aback to be told, on this threshhold of the text, that the only reason to enter was to be educated. The general appearance of the volume would doubtless have added to the puzzle. Until the 1994 Norton Critical Edition, this Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a large hardback which appeared under several imprints, was by far the richest in paratextual material, even

51

Howard Mumford Jones, introduction to the Charles E. Merrill edition (1969), p. vii. On the complex link between Uncle Tom, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X (who frequently accused Martin Luther King of being an Uncle Tom), see Wilson Jeremiah Moses, Black Messiahs and Uncle Toms: Social and Literary Manipulations of a Religious Myth, Revised Edition (University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1993, 1st edn 1982). 53 John William Ward, afterword, Signet Classics edition (1966), p. 494; Howard Mumford Jones, introduction to the Charles E. Merrill edition (1969), p. xvi. 52

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if it was also the only American edition in the 1960s and one of the very few since 1852 to omit the subtitle. In abundant footnotes, Stern traced the sources of many of the characters and incidents, and the publisher used this sales pitch: “The only edition that gives the sources for this world famous novel.” Special care had been taken to reproduce the text and illustrations of the first edition, together with a selection of Cruikshank’s engravings for the edition published by Cassell in London in 1852. In some kind of twisted editorial logic, the impressive amount of work that had gone into the edition clashed with the acerbic introduction, which, by denying that the novel achieved the status of literature, also undermined the dust jacket quotation in which Edmund Wilson vouched for its literary credentials. III 1970–2002: New Reading Guides for Uncle Tom’s Cabin The renaissance begun in the 1960s was no ephemeral phenomenon. About 10 new editions and reprints of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were published in the 1970s, over a dozen in each of the two following decades, and again in the first five years of the twentyfirst century. During the same period, Stowe’s other works, especially Key, Dred, The Minister’s Wooing, and The Pearl of Orr’s Island, also regained a measure of favor, evidenced by the fact they were reprinted.54 Two different Harriet Beecher Stowe Readers came out in the 1990s, as did Joan Hedrick’s authoritative biography of the writer. The sheer volume of critical literature over the past thirty years all testify to a sustained interest in Stowe and her works, particularly her first novel. The collections in which Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been published over the last decades reveal its current status. The novel continues to appear in collections of classics, accompanied by a great deal of scholarly and documentary material. But it has also come out in “popular” collections, with little paratextual accompaniment save an introduction, and in special editions aimed at bibliophiles or specific audiences (“Large Print” editions, for instance). Reflecting the evolutions in the world of books, the novel is now available as an audio-book as well as an e-book. In an example of recent developments that have influenced the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the 2001 Modern Library edition includes a reading group guide. Mirroring the 1960s, the status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a classic is reflected in the names of collections in which it appears: Literary Classics of the United States, American Masterpiece Library, Bantam Classics, to name just a few. The number of study guides is another indication that the novel has been deemed worthy of study in college and university, which, as Pierre Bourdieu notes, is an “infallible sign of consecration.”55 The clearest evidence that the novel has been canonized, however, lies in its inclusion in the prestigious “Library of America.” As in the past, the editorial and allographic paratexts, by pointing to new protocols of reading, and new uses for the book, also help account 54 See

the various volumes of Books in Print for the 1990s. Pierre Bourdieu, Les règles de l’art: genèse et structure du champ littéraire, Paris, Seuil, 1998 (1st edn 1992), p. 245. My translation. 55


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for the appearance of new editions. The publication of different editions by the same publishing house only a few years apart indicates an awareness by publishers that the book will find buyers, while the renewal of paratextual material hints at an effort to keep pace with changing interpretations of the novel.56 Some of the publishers chose to include illustrations in their hardback (and, though more rarely, paperback) editions. In a carry-over from the past, most of the illustrated editions selected either Billings’s illustrations for the first edition (the Norton Critical Edition, for example), or illustrations from other nineteenth-century editions.57 Thus, some of the British illustrations by George Thomas and Thomas Robert Macquoid, originally used in an 1853 edition published in London, then chosen to illustrate the 1879 new American edition, can be found in both the Reader’s Digest and Hart’s editions. The latter also carries illustrations by Cruikshank. For the Franklin Library’s limited edition collection, “the 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature,” issued in 1984, the publishers commissioned illustrations from Thomas B. Allen, whose images evoked those of earlier editions, and depicted Tom as white-haired. The front covers of the paperback editions demonstrate both a remarkable variety as well as a degree of uniformity. As Juliet Gardiner noted, “Current illustrative conventions produce a clear, cultural and temporal specific taxonomy of texts: classics carry framed, provenanced illustrations contemporaneous with their own formation.”58 Many of the covers reproduce nineteenth-century paintings, often of slave auctions, or illustrations from early editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Paradoxically, one of the most scholarly editions of recent years, the Norton Critical Edition (1994), features on its front cover a colored lithograph of a Tom show, depicting the melodramatic scene of Eliza crossing the ice, ferocious-looking hounds nipping at her heels. Also somewhat misleading, albeit for a different reason, a portrait of Frederick Douglass takes up the entire front cover of the Everyman edition, which offers both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Douglass’s Narrative in the same volume (1993, 1997 reprint), a clear sign that 56 Oxford University Press published one edition in 1998 and another one, a “150th Anniversary Edition,” in 2002, and the entire novel was printed in the Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader, edited by Joan Hedrick and issued in 1999. If the two different editions in the “Everyman” collection (1993 and 1995) are to be explained by the 1990s split in the list (with Knopf acquiring the rights to the hardbacks and Dent, Orion/Tuttle retaining the rights to the paperbacks), that Barnes and Noble issued two editions rather than reprints in 1995 and 2003, can only be ascribed to an awareness that the work would sell and a desire to bring the paratextual accompaniment up to date. As will be seen in the table of editions, all but one include Stowe’s preface to the first edition; one omits the subtitle, and another claims to be unabridged whereas it leaves out the last chapter. As in the 1960s, quite a few editions add a note indicating that they use the text of the first edition. 57 Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn has also had a number of different illustrators over the decades, yet most of the recent illustrated editions reproduce Kemble’s illustrations for the first edition, in an effort to present the text as it appeared to nineteenthcentury readers. 58 Juliet Gardiner, “‘An Immense Continent’: The New Territories of Illustrated Books,” Interfaces: Image Texte Langage, No. 15 (Dijon, Université de Bourgogne, 1999): 41–60.

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a hierarchy has been established between the two works. Compared to those of the 1960s, the front covers of the last decades are relatively sedate, and largely devoid of editorial blurbs. While earlier covers attempted to capture the attention of potential purchasers with a list of selling points, recent editions merely mention the name of the preface writer, as if there were no longer any need to convince the public that Uncle Tom’s Cabin deserves to be read. Marketing strategies are confined to the back covers and the inside pages of the volumes. An analysis of editorial blurbs reveals both continuity and considerable alterations in the way Uncle Tom’s Cabin is presented. The influence of the novel, frequently supported by Lincoln’s quotation, still represents a major marketing tool. To quote only two examples, the Library of America (1991) touts Uncle Tom’s Cabin as “a book with the emotional impact of a round of cannon fire,” while the editorial blurb of the Everyman/Borzoi Book edition (copyrighted in 1995) goes as far as to compare the novel with the nation’s founding documents: “As an American document of transforming power, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) is outranked only by the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Emancipation Proclamation.” The literary value of the novel is frequently asserted, and what once was regarded as its weaknesses are sometimes presented as assets: “Contemporary readers can still appreciate the powerful effect of its melodramatic characterization and its unapologetic sentimentality” (The Library of America, 1982). The back covers of two Signet Classics editions also indicate a significant shift in literary judgment. In 1966, the blurb clearly hinted at the low critical esteem in which the work was held; in 1998, Uncle Tom’s Cabin is characterized as “a powerful, triumphant work.” Especially during the 1990s, editorial blurbs emphasize the controversial nature of the book. Words such as “polemical” and “controversial” recur on back covers, with the reader most often left to discover in the introduction and the text what exactly the object of the scandal is. The 1981 Bantam edition advertised the novel as “shocking, controversial, and powerful,” and many publishers followed suit, turning the controversy into a selling point. With a great economy of means, the Barnes and Noble 1995 edition blurb condensed two sales arguments in a single sentence: “What has often been overlooked because of the controversies around the book is its narrative drive.” Back cover blurbs were revealing of new reading protocols: Thus, both the 1970s facsimile reprint by Houghton Mifflin of the 1885 “popular edition” and the Penguin Classics 1980s edition invited readers to embark on a feminist reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Two 1990s editions included works by Frederick Douglass and, by locating Stowe’s novel in the context of African-American writing, called for an intertextual reading (Everyman, 1993; Oxford World Classics, 1998). The shift reflects major trends over the last decades, among them feminism and the influence of cultural studies, which led to challenges of the traditional American literary canon, and to the so-called canon wars, but also a new visibility of AfricanAmerican literature—hence the inclusion of Douglass next to Stowe. The paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin reveals concomitant changes in academia, with increasing numbers of “minority” groups among both students and faculty, and the creation of


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gender studies and African-American studies departments.59 Before the 1980s, not a single woman had been invited to comment upon the novel in an introduction. Since then, six women have authored prefaces. It took exactly 100 years before an African American, Langston Hughes, was asked to write an introduction. He has since been joined by William Mackey, Jr, Charles Johnson, and Darryl Pinckney. Although most preface writers continued to come from academia, several writers of fiction (Charles Johnson, Darryl Pinckney, Jane Smiley) have been invited to collaborate in editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Old and New Prefaces: Similarities and Differences Like their predecessors, preface writers of the past 30 years insist both on the unprecedented popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the nineteenth century and its historical impact. Yet in respect to historical power, opinions are divided. While for some preface writers the novel was, as Kazin put it, “a central event in American history,” in so far as it revealed the horrors of slavery to mid-nineteenth-century American society, other preface writers describe the impact of the novel as limited.60 After all, hardly a few years after they had been moved to tears by the novel, Northerners would endorse Jim Crow laws.61 Uncle Tom’s Cabin did, however, influence contemporary society in other ways. In her introduction, Jean Fagan Yellin notes that Uncle Tom’s Cabin helped to make anti-slavery literature acceptable in the eyes of publishers; Darryl Pinckney remarks that the novel contributed to abolish prejudices against fiction.62 Many preface writers account for the initial popularity of the novel by the perfect adaptation of authorial strategies to the target audience. Most preface writers explain that Stowe addressed a white and generally middle-class public, the public she deemed the source of the problem as well as its potential solution. Because she knew her audience well, she was able to move her readers by calling upon a mixture of sentimental tradition and religious feeling.63 Recent prefaces also reflect 59 In

1960, roughly 6 per cent of college students were from minority groups against 20 per cent by 1988. By 1985, 27 per cent of the faculty in institutions of higher education were women and over 10 per cent were non-white: Lawrence W. Levine, “Clio, Canons, and Culture,” The Journal of American History, 80/3 (December 1993): 849–67. 60 Kazin, introduction to the Everyman/Borzoi, edition, c. 1995, p. ix. Kazin actually wrote two introductions, one in the 1980s (it appeared, in a sometimes slightly modified form, in a 1981 Bantam classics edition, a 1980s Buccaneer Books edition, and as an afterword to the 1991 Reader’s Digest edition), and another one in the 1990s. The second strikes quite a different note from the first. 61 Jean Fagan Yellin, introduction to the Oxford World Classics 1998 edition, p. vii. 62 Jean Fagan Yellin, introduction to the Oxford World Classics 1998 edition, p. xxiii; Darryl Pinckney, introduction to the 1998 Signet Classics edition, p. xxii. 63 As part of the research work which informs the prefaces of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, see Gladys Sherman Lewis, who accounts for the popularity of the novel when it first appeared by explaining how Stowe mixes the three great traditions of Puritanism, sentimentality, and

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the rise of the field of book history; for the first time in the paratext, the novel’s initial popularity is also explained by Jewett’s promotional efforts, as well as by the technological innovations which allowed so many copies to be quickly printed and widely circulated.64 The allographic paratext of the 1980s and 1990s echoes the editorial blurbs by systematically introducing Uncle Tom’s Cabin as the object of a polemic. Ann Douglas emphasizes the point from the first, by titling her introduction, “The Art of Controversy.” For several of the preface writers, the main feature of Stowe’s first novel is precisely the lack of unanimity around it. Perhaps, Mackey notes, “controversy” is what makes a book a classic. Because of the concern with the polemical status of the novel, many introductions look into the evolution of the reception of the work since its publication. This is an entirely new element in the paratext of the novel, and speaks to the emergence of reception theory, as developed by Hans Joseph Jauss and others. While the 1960s introductions erroneously contended that the novel had always been popular, the latest prefaces often tend to overstate facts, this time by describing Uncle Tom’s Cabin as out of print for most of the twentieth century. For preface writers of the last three decades or so, the controversy centers around the literary appreciation of the novel more than its historical accuracy or its documentary interest. In another sign of canonization, the novel is now most often looked upon as a literary work rather than an historical artifact. Yet while the editorial blurbs and the collections themselves loudly assert the literary value of the novel, preface writers are more uncertain, or more cautious. Douglas notes that the novel’s status is “vexed and uncertain,” while Ammons and Mackey stress the lack of consensus on the subject. Much of the space in the introductions is devoted to an explanation of the controversy. As in the past, some preface writers—Alfred Kazin, for example—ascribe the poor reputation of the novel to a confusion between the work and its adaptations. Another explanation is provided by historian James M. McPherson. In his introduction to the 1991 Vintage Books/Library of America edition, McPherson accounts for the novel’s loss of popularity by the nostalgic rewritings of history in the first half of the twentieth century. In these rewritings, Gone with the Wind replaces Uncle Tom’s Cabin until the 1950s, when further revisions show slavery as a brutal institution, which melodrama. Lewis describes Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a work “programmed for reader response” (Gladys Sherman Lewis, Message, Messenger, and Response: Puritan Forms and Cultural Reformation in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Lanham [New York, University Press of America, 1994] p. 229). On Stowe’s thorough knowledge of her public, also see Stephen Railton, Authorship and Audience: Literary Performance in the American Renaissance (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1991), p. 75. Philip Fisher argues that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was effective because it resorted to the sentimental tradition which was shared by Stowe and her audience. What’s more, by appealing to emotions, by extending humanity to slaves, Uncle Tom’s Cabin reversed “the process of slavery which has at its core the withdrawal of human status from a part of humanity,” and thus radically changed the reader’s vision of slaves (Hard Facts, p. 100). 64 Jean Fagan Yellin, introduction to the Oxford World Classics 1998 edition, p. xx; Darryl Pinckney, introduction to the 1998 Signet Classics edition, p. ix.


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effectively rehabilitates abolitionists and Stowe’s novel at the same time. Yet another explanation for the contempt in which the novel was long held lies in the history of literary criticism. In the 1960s, none of the preface writers, save for Kenneth Lynn, questioned the established canon. In the following decades, however, the canon was challenged, analyzed, and to some extent dismantled and redrawn. Feminist scholarship has exerted a major influence in the revival and canonization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. As early as 1963, Ellen Moers remarked on the exclusion of women from the canon: “The suspicion has grown upon me that we already practice a segregation of major women writers unknowingly, because many of them have written novels, a genre with which literary historians and anthologists are still ill at ease.” In the following decade, Jane Tomkins and Nina Baym offered their own explanation for this exclusion, by defining the canon in terms of cultural and political power.65 Unsurprisingly, the questioning of the canon also takes place between the covers of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In 1981, Alfred Kazin derided the “conformism of literary taste,” which used twentieth-century criteria of form and control to deny literary value to any work which did not conform to the doxa. McPherson also rued the conservatism of literary critics, and called upon his own experience to illustrate his point. Although in his student days he had found the book moving, he had let his professors convince him that it was “maudlin pulp.” Much later, reading Edmund Wilson’s positive (r)evaluation of the novel in Patriotic Gore, he had been glad to discover he had not been mistaken. Jean Fagan Yellin accounts for the contempt in which the book was long held by the influence of Jamesian aesthetics, which put novels of social protest outside the pale of great works. Amanda Claybaugh, in the introduction to the 2003 Barnes and Noble edition, traces the decline in the reputation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to nineteenth-century “changes in the American literary marketplace,” which began when distinctions began to be drawn between audiences, and between high and low culture. Elizabeth Ammons invites her reader to look at the canon from a critical perspective and wonder why the novel was so long excluded from it. William Mackey, Jr evinces the degree of uncertainty created by challenges to the canon when he follows his remark on controversy as a prerequisite for a book becoming a “classic”—“whatever that term is supposed to mean,” he adds.66

65 Ellen Moers, Literary Women (New York, Anchor Books, 1977, 1st edn 1976), p. xv; Nina Baym, “Melodramas of Beset Manhood: How Theories of American Fiction Exclude Women Authors”; Jane Tomkins, “Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Politics of Literary History.” Both essays were reprinted in Elaine Showalter (ed.), The New Feminist Criticism: Essays on Women, Literature, and Theory (New York, Pantheon Books, 1985). On feminist challenges to the canon, also see, among others Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1978), and Jane Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790–1860 (New York, Oxford University Press, 1985). 66 Alfred Kazin, introduction to the 1981 Bantam Classics edition, p. viii; James M. McPherson, introduction to the 1991 Vintage Books/The Library of America edition, p. xvii; Jean Fagan Yellin, introduction to the 1998 Oxford World Classics edition, p. xxv; Amanda

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In most cases, after accounting for the unstable status of the novel, preface writers proceed to give their own assessment, often much more nuanced than the back-cover blurbs would lead one to think. Once again, from complete revaluation to ironic criticism, opinions differ widely, and two introductions even by the same critic can convey different messages as to the value of the text. Thus, in 1981, Kazin argued that Uncle Tom’s Cabin was proof that a work with a message could also be a work of art. A decade later, in the Everyman/Borzoi edition, he was less enthusiastic about Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a work of art, either because he had revised his judgment or perhaps because militant revaluation was no longer needed. In the wake of Kenneth Lynn’s 1960s reassessment, some preface writers emphasize the realism of the novel, as well as its Americanness. For Douglas, writing in the Penguin Classics edition, while Stowe failed to demonstrate the analytical powers of Melville, for instance, she created a profoundly American “polyphonic oratory of reality.” In The Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader, Hedrick notes that Stowe was a precursor in creating a specifically American type of literature. In the 2001 Modern Library Edition, Jane Smiley praises the novel, which she calls “the most important American literary document of the nineteenth century.” As such, Smiley writes, it “ought to be required reading in every high school in America.” Smiley had already defended Uncle Tom’s Cabin when, in a much-discussed 1996 article in Harper’s Magazine, she had suggested that it would have been better for modern American literature to come out of Stowe’s novel rather than Huck Finn, as Hemingway claimed.67 Other preface writers are more critical of the work, especially those, like McPherson, who tend to classify it among sociological and historical works. Quoting one of his predecessors, Howard Mumford Jones, who had compared Tom to Victor Hugo’s Jean Valjean, McPherson suspects readers may find that Les Misérables is superior to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. For Christopher Bigsby (1993 Everyman edition), the revaluation of Stowe’s novel is essentially owing to political reasons, an argument not unlike Harold Bloom’s remark on “the backward reach of the current canonical crusades, which attempt to elevate a number of sadly inadequate women writers of the nineteenth century.”68 The Signet Classics 1998 edition presents a number of contradictions between the editorial blurb and the allographic paratext. While the blurb Claybaugh, introduction to the 2003 Barnes and Noble Classics edition, pp. xxxv–xxxvi; William Mackey, Jr, introduction to the 1995 Barnes and Noble Classics edition, p. ix. 67 Jane Smiley, “Say It Ain’t So, Huck: Second Thoughts on Mark Twain’s ‘Masterpiece,’” Harper’s Magazine (January 1996): 61–7. See “Letters,” Harper’s, April 1996, for some of the answers; see also, among others, Justin Kaplan, “Selling ‘Huck Finn’ Down the River,” The New York Times Book Review, 10 March 1996: 27. 68 Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages (London, Macmillan, 1995, 1st edn 1994), p. 540. See especially Chapter 1 for Bloom’s interpretation of challenges to the canon as an effect of the “politically correct” movement, as well as the cultural studies’ interest in popular culture. In 1996, however, Bloom noted, “rereading it now, I have to agree with Wilson that it is a permanent and impressive work”: introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Bloom’s Notes (New York, Chelsea House Publishers, 1996, p. 5).


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announces “a timeless and moving novel,” Darryl Pinckney’s introduction describes Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a terribly antiquated novel, and provides the reader with what can be termed an ironic reading guide. The feminist approach to the novel, which Lynn had hinted at in 1962, is taken up in a few prefaces, usually and unsurprisingly written by women. Douglas notes that without being a feminist, Stowe transgressed the gender boundaries of her time, which forbade women to speak in public. Her female characters, moreover, are usually morally superior to the male ones. For Claybaugh, Stowe works within conventions but turns them to her own ends. Like Mrs. Bird, she accepts the division between distinct spheres (public/male and domestic/female), but Stowe “redefines public questions as domestic ones.”69 Most preface writers, however, make only passing mention of feminist readings of the novel. Much more space and attention is devoted to the question of black characters in the novel, and the recurring issue of potential racism in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Most of the prefaces of the last decades note some degree of racism in Stowe’s black characters, without agreeing, however, on the nature or the extent of that racism, sometimes seen as closer to nineteenth-century “romantic racialism” than to outright racism. Hedrick provides an unusual insight into Stowe’s vision of the races, which she partly ascribes to the fact that the writer only knew blacks as her servants, and misinterpreted their docility, which was of course owing to social circumstances, as a racial characteristic. Interpreting Tom as a saint, within the religious context of the nineteenth century, in the light of Stowe’s deep faith, allows some preface writers, Douglas and Kazin, for instance, to exonerate Stowe of racism. Smiley also contextualizes within the historical framework Tom’s refusal to reveal Cassy and Emmeline’s hiding place. This indicates, for Smiley, that Tom chooses to save his soul rather than his body, a choice perfectly understandable to an 1850s audience, even if modern readers find it “unpalatable” (p. xxi). McPherson also sees Tom as a Christ figure. Yellin, however, comes closer to Baldwin’s interpretation of the novel, and argues that Stowe was worried about eternal damnation for whites. According to Yellin, while the docility, affection, and capacity for forgiveness of Stowe’s black characters were signs of moral superiority, they also made the characters close to the stereotypes of plantation novels. For Pinckney, Tom “turns to the Bible in the way the other characters reach for sedatives, brandy, or the cambric handkerchief” (p. xiii). That a few recent editions of the novel should include slave narratives, either complete or in the form of extracts, also signifies new approaches to the novel. Putting Uncle Tom’s Cabin under the same cover as contemporary slave narratives inevitably raises the question of Stowe’s borrowing from various narratives for her own novel. In late twentieth-century editions, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and writings by African Americans, Frederick Douglass especially, engage in a dialogue. Can Douglass’s story, “The Heroic Slave,” placed an an appendix to Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the 1998 Oxford

69 Ann Douglas, “The Art of Controversy,” Penguin Classics, 1981, pp. 16–19; Amanda Claybaugh, introduction to the 2003 Barnes and Noble edition, pp. xx–xxiii.

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World Classics edition, be seen as an answer to Stowe’s novel?70 The relationship of intertextuality also materially illustrates what Christopher Bigsby calls “the deep suspicion of some black critics for whom it [the novel] can be seen as infringing on the cultural hegemony of those who suffered.” In other words, what allowed and entitled Stowe to speak on behalf of slaves? Can Stowe be said to have been “taking a free ride on black suffering,” as William Styron would later be accused of doing in The Confessions of Nat Turner? And why should a novel written by a white middleclass woman have weighed more heavily on the American mind than all authentic slave narratives put together?71 In the 1997 reprint of the 1993 Everyman edition, which offers the reader both Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, the hierarchy established by the portrait of Douglass, rather than Stowe, on the front cover, is complemented in the publisher’s blurb on the back cover: Douglass’s Narrative is defined as a key document in American history while the importance of Stowe’s novel is limited to changes it helped to provoke in American slave laws. The introduction accounts for the editorial choice: Douglass’s Narrative bears the stamp of authenticity while Stowe’s knowledge of slavery was insignificant. This, according to Christopher Bigsby, makes the influence of Stowe’s novel all the more paradoxical. From this perspective, the inclusion of Douglass’s Narrative serves a double purpose: 1) it redresses an injustice; and 2) it provides a necessary corrective to the representation of slavery in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The preface by William Mackey, Jr in the 1995 Barnes and Nobles Classics edition, is entitled “An Historical and Personal Note.” He recounts how, as a schoolboy in 1930s Georgia, he witnessed his teacher taken to task by a white school superintendent who had spotted among the few books in the school library four new copies of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, “goddam pieces of Yankee trash.” For Mackey’s grandmother, born under slavery, Stowe’s novel rang true, and its characters “had an immediacy that transcended any concerns about structure, narrative, or the accuracy of geographic or floral and faunal references.” In contrast with this rare example of a “popular” reading of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Charles Johnson defines the problems Stowe’s novel raises for an African-American writer. In his introduction to the 2002 Oxford World Classics edition (150th Anniversary Edition), Johnson notes that, through his own novels, he has been attempting to alter the characters born from Uncle Tom’s Cabin and “deeply inscribed in America’s racial iconography.” For Johnson, Stowe’s novel speaks to the failure of white writers, then and now, to portray African Americans characters.72 Although changes both in American society and academia have modified the terms of the debate, prefaces and introductions therefore continue a lively discourse over the novel’s value and legacy. The very debate over Stowe’s novel has tended 70

Jean Fagan Yellin, introduction to the Oxford World Classics edition, p. xxiv. Christopher Bigsby, introduction to the 1993 Everyman edition, p. xxx. 72 William Mackey, Jr, “Uncle Tom’s Cabin: An Historical and Personal Note,” Barnes and Noble Classics (1995), pp. xii–xiii ; Charles Johnson, introduction to the 2002 Oxford University Press edition, p. xv. 71


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to become a reading guide to Uncle Tom’s Cabin as well as a justification for new editions. Late twentieth- and early twenty-first century readers are thus invited to use the novel as a starting point for questions surrounding racial and gendered identity, and the possibility, as Charles Johnson puts it, to “write well the lived experience of the racial Other.”73

73

Charles Johnson, introduction to the 2002 Oxford University Press edition, p. xv.


Conclusion Uncle Tom’s Cabin: A Popular Classic Depending on the edition and historical period, the reader approaches Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a realistic/sentimental novel, as a revolutionary/deeply conventional work. The novel, he/she is told, is outright racist, the product of romantic racialism, the first novel to choose a black character for a hero. Readers are variously led to expect a testimony, a historical, a political and/or a sociological document, a sermon, a piece of propaganda, and sometimes a mixture of the above. Prefaces and introductions convey a multitude of different, sometimes radically opposed reading guides, and mark the text as protean. The dual status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a classic and as a popular work helps account for the mixed messages conveyed in the paratext of the novel. The initial debate around the novel was reflected in the authorial paratext and focused on the veracity of its representation. After the Civil War, however, authors of prefaces and introductions began to analyze the novel in terms of its literary value. The hesitations and waverings of these late nineteenth-century elements of paratext laid the groundwork for subsequent fluctuations. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was introduced as a classic, but a classic with a difference. Compared to major literary works, Stowe’s novel appeared as a flawed masterpiece. Its very popularity raised a challenge. In the nineteenth century, the success of the work frequently represented the ultimate answer to the problem of literary value: the people had spoken in favor of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. A century later, the popularity of the novel had clearly become a liability. Yet it still puzzled preface writers who confessed to an inability to judge an object which refused to fit identifiable categories. The debate continues in the most recent introductions to new editions of the work. Absence of consensus, one of the distinctive features of the novel and its paratext, has now become a sales argument. That the paratext of the novel should echo the critical reception and its divisions seems at first unsurprising. Among the various functions of paratextual elements, however, recommendation stands foremost. In the case of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, paratextual elements occasionally clash within a single edition, with a back-cover blurb logically enticing a reader to step over the threshold, and an introduction warning him/her of dangers awaiting the entrance into the text. Blatant contradiction between editorial blurbs and introductions is a hallmark of many of the editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

204


Uncle Tom’s Cabin and History Stowe’s first novel maintains a peculiar relationship with American history. Uncle Tom’s Cabin has its source in history since the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law caused its inception. The force the novel in turn exerted on history, and which raises the question of the influence of fiction on actual events, is the one topic which has until recently generated relative consensus in the paratext. Stowe’s novel has been credited with playing a role in bringing about the Civil War in large part because of the intense emotion and indignation aroused in its many readers. Very few American editions of the novel issued since the 1870s have failed to mention this argument, sometimes in the editorial blurb, sometimes in the introduction, but usually in both. Since 1938, the date of its first appearance in the paratext of the novel, publishers and preface writers have made good use of Lincoln’s apocryphal address to Stowe, usually reported as, “So this is the little lady who made this big war.” Coming from one of the most revered figures in American history, Lincoln’s legendary quote naturally constitutes the best possible recommendation. This probably explains why the authenticity of this concise and arresting formulation was rarely questioned before the 1960s. To some extent, the assertion of the impact of the novel on the events of its times has led many to classify the work among documents of social protest. This has frequently tended to complicate the evaluation of its literary worth. Readings of history have naturally affected the way the work has been presented to American readers over the past century and a half. In the late nineteenth century, the trend toward national reconciliation translated into a protocol of reading from which all sectional passions should be absent. During the same period, attempts to rewrite slavery as a benign institution clearly informed the paratext of some editions, and more particularly accompanying illustrations. With the passing of decades and the release of new editions, introductions to the novel have reflected trends in historical thinking about slavery, the war, and Reconstruction. If ever-evolving perceptions of, and attitudes toward, nineteenth-century America exert no mean influence on how the text is presented to new readers, historical forces have also played a part in the fate of the novel itself. The paratext of the 1960s, for instance, clearly indicates that the civil rights movement gave Uncle Tom’s Cabin a new relevance. In its prefaces and introductions, Uncle Tom’s Cabin emerges as an historical document, first because of its important impact on events themselves, and, second, because it has more or less always been used as a representation of slavery. This paradoxical use of a fictional work in part explains the continued and continuous debate over the “truth” of the novel’s representation of slavery. To some extent, Stowe was responsible for the ambiguity. After all, she had taken great care in repeatedly assuring the reader that her narrative was based on facts. She made this explicit in the text itself, as well as in her numerous prefaces, in which she defended the novel against accusations of falsity and exaggeration. The attempt to find a balance between fact and fiction in Uncle Tom’s Cabin led to Stowe’s writing A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, an attempt to provide documentary evidence in support of her portrayal of slavery in the novel. Whatever knowledge Stowe really had of slavery, its presentation

Conclusion

205

in the novel has been discussed in paratexts since the work’s initial publication. That the discussion has not yet found closure is evidenced by recent editions, which have included Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, his short story, “The Heroic Slave,” or extracts from various slave narratives. In these editions, the desire to assign differing degrees of authenticity and influence to the texts is made clear both in the back-cover blurbs and the introductions and, even, as we have seen, on front covers which depict Douglass rather than Stowe. The very intertextual phenomenon in the volumes tends to reassert the uncertain status of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, between novel and historical document. Beyond critical evaluation and historical accuracy, complicating and enriching both, the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin echoes more topical debates. As we have seen, in the 1960s, the paratext turned into a debate over the best solutions to the race problem in the United States. Interpreting Uncle Tom as either a pathetic, retrograde figure, a symbol of failure and betrayal in the ongoing struggle of African Americans to achieve any meaningful change in their status, or envisioning him as a precursor to Martin Luther King clearly spoke to different views of how best to achieve racial equality, not in Stowe’s times, but in the 1960s. Similarly, reading Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a feminist work entails a (personal and political) agenda that is unlikely to be shared by those who view the recent reassessment of the work as a negative by-product of the cultural studies movement. Evaluating the novel is thus made all the more complex inasmuch as judgment is intricately involved with questions of history, the place of women, the role of religion, and the race issue in the United States at the time any given introduction is drafted. No doubt this accounts in part for the sometimes virulent tone of prefaces. The paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin occasionally turns into a platform, with the text serving as a pretext to convey a message to one’s contemporaries. That the novel continues to engage succeeding generations in essential issues helps account for its survival. Theatrical adaptations became part of the novel by the inclusion of props absent from the text (the dogs chasing Eliza, for instance), and thus created a multi-layered work, composed of the text together with its different interpretations. Similarly, the paratext of the novel encompasses many decades of discussion and debate, as each generation reinterprets and reappropriates the work. The paratext reflects the evolution of society, and presents an unchanged text in the light of an ever-changing present. Because frequently the paratext also takes into account at least some of the paratext of preceding editions, introductions and prefaces offer the same multi-layered quality as the text. Examining the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin over 150 years thus unveils a lively debate. Literary critics, historians, and more recently fiction writers “meet” and discuss in the paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In the various introductions, the voice of the author, of critics, of historical figures, and sometimes of readers, can be heard along with those of current and past preface writers. The dialogic, or perhaps more accurately polyphonic quality of the paratext (what Bakhtin might call “heteroglossia”) is evidenced in the vast narrative composed by the prefaces to Uncle Tom’s Cabin. French publisher Hubert Nyssen argues that, contrary to the text, the paratext enjoys

206


the unique advantage of “the right to repent,” to retract, to advance different opinions. The paratext of Uncle Tom’s Cabin represents a striking illustration of this right to repent. James Fenimore Cooper humorously dedicated his preface to the first edition of The Spy (1821) “to the few who read this introduction; for nobody looks at a preface until they are at a loss to discover, from the book itself, what it is the author means.” Charles Dickens seemed to concur when he noted two decades later, in a preface to an 1847 edition of The Pickwick Papers, “Prefaces, though seldom read, are continually written ….” Readers may or may not read or pay heed to the paratext which invites them to approach a text in a certain way. Viewing the myriad paratextual elements of a century and a half of American editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin certainly provides a variegated narrative about a novel whose story is never quite finished.

Hubert

Nyssen, Du texte au livre, les avatars du sens (Paris, Nathan, Collection Le texte à l’œuvre, 1993), p. 159. My translation. James Fenimore Cooper, The Spy (Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 2; Charles Dickens, The Pickwick Papers (Penguin Classics, 1986), p. 3.

Appendix 1

Serialization of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in The National Era Installment

Date

Chapter(s)

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 No installment 12 13 14

5 June 1851 12 June 1851 19 June 1851 26 June 1851 3 July 1851 10 July 1851 17 July 1851 24 July 1851 31 July 1851 7 August 1851 14 August 1851 21 August 1851 28 August 1851 4 September 1851 11 September 1851

1 and 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 (begin) 9 (end) 10 11 12 13 14

The first installment carried the following note: “(Copyright Secured by The Author.) For The National Era.” This was appended to all the installments until 28 August 1851, when it disappeared for three successive numbers; on 18 September, it reappeared in a slightly modified form: “(Copyright Secured according to Law.) For The National Era.” Chapter six shows the problems raised by this imperfect copyright. Uncle Tom’s Cabin was usually printed on page 1 of the Era (with the following exceptions: installments no. 30 and 32). As a specific example of what surrounds Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the Era in this particular issue, the novel begins on the 7th and last column of the 1st page, preceded by part 2 of “IllStarred,” by Patty Lee (Alice Cary), and by “Canadian Correspondence,” “Things in Kentucky,” “Letter from South Africa,” and “Mechanism n°9,” one in a series of scientific articles signed Josiah Holbrook. Chapter 9 is cut roughly in half, and the installment ends on Mrs Bird’s advice to Eliza: “Put your trust in God; he will protect you” (Uncle Tom’s Cabin, hereafter UTC, Penguin Classics, p. 151). Chapter 10 is mistakenly numbered Chapter 9 in the Era, though Chapter 11 is correctly numbered the following week.

208


Installment

Date

Chapter(s)

15 16 17 18 19 20 No installment 21 22 23 24 25 26

18 September 1851 25 September 1851 2 October 1851 9 October 1851 16 October 1851 23 October 1851 30 October 1851 6 November 1851 13 November 1851 20 November 1851 27 November 1851 4 December 1851 11 December 1851

15 16 17 18 (beg.) 18 (end) and 19 (beg.) 19 (end) 2010 21 and 22 23 and 24 25 and 26 (beg.)11 26 (end) 27

Uncle Tom’s Cabin starts on column 6, after “To The Winds,” a poem by Alice Cary, “The Peace Congress,” reprinted from The Herald of Peace (London), “A Reminiscence” (a poem by Lizzie Linnet), and “Mechanism n°15.” Uncle Tom’s Cabin starts on column 4, after part 6 of “Ill-Starred,” a poem (entitled “Miriam”), by Phoebe Cary and “Mechanism n°16.” Like the preceding week, Uncle Tom’s Cabin starts on column 4, after a poem (“Hymn”) by Phoebe Cary; part 7 of “Ill-Starred”; and two articles, “Enlargement of the Capitol” and “The Swedish Nightingale’s New Vocation” (the very popular Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind, on tour in the United States, purchased a trousseau for a servant in her hotel and attended her wedding as a bridesmaid); and finally “A Sea-Side Thought,” a poem by Caroline A. Briggs. The installment ends following Miss Ophelia’s order to Jane and Rosa: “Go in and attend to your muslims.” (UTC, p. 322); it includes about four-fifths of Chapter 18. Chapter 18 in the Era includes a section of what will become Chapter 19 in the book. In the weekly, Chapter 18 ends on a remark by St Clare to Ophelia: “The most I can do is to try and keep out of the way of it” (UTC, p. 328). Chapter 19 follows, and the installment is cut after another remark from St Clare to his cousin, in which St Clare alludes to his father: “He revered and respected her above all living beings; but he would have said it all the same to the virgin [sic] Mary herself, if she had come in the way of his system” (UTC, p. 336). In the Era, the chapter is mistakenly numbered 18, and the mistake will remain uncorrected until the end of serialization. As a result, the last chapter in the Era will be numbered 44, instead of the correct 45. For greater clarity, I have restored the correct numbering. 10 Uncle Tom’s Cabin starts on column 4, after “Judge Tucker on The Law of Treason” and an article (one of many) on the Hungarian revolutionary Louis Kossuth, alluded to in Chapter 17 of Stowe’s novel. 11 The installment includes almost half of Chapter 26 and closes with Eva telling the slaves who surround her deathbed, “[…] think that I loved you and am gone to heaven, and that I want to see you all there” (UTC, p. 419).

Appendix 1

209

Installment

Date

Chapter(s)

No installment 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41

18 December 1851 25 December 1851 1 January 1852 8 January 1852 15 January 1852 22 January 1852 29 January 1852 5 February 1852 12 February 1852 19 February 1852 26 February 1852 4 March 1852 11 March 1852 18 March 1852 25 March 1852 1 April 1852

28 (beg.)12 28 (end) and 29 (beg.)13 29 (end)14 3015 31 32 (beg.)16 32 (end) and 33 (beg.)17 33 (end) and 34 35 36 37 and 38 39 and 40 (beg.)18 40 (end), 41 and 42(beg.)19 42 (end) and 43 (beg.)20 43 (end), 44 and 45

12

The installment carries roughly two-thirds of the chapter and ends on St Clare saying to Ophelia, “One can see, you know, very easily, how others ought to be martyrs” (UTC, p. 451). 13 The installment closes after a little over a third of Chapter 29, on the indignant reaction of Ophelia upon hearing that Rosa will be whipped on Marie St Clare’s order, “‘Shameful! monstrous! outrageous!’ she said to herself, as she was crossing the parlor” (UTC, p. 460). 14 Uncle Tom’s Cabin starts on column 6, after an installment of “My Summer with Dr. Singletary,” an unsigned novel (actually authored by John Greenleaf Whittier, the corresponding editor of the Era), a poem, an article on Kossuth, and an account of Congressional proceedings. 15 The installment starts on column 3, page 3. 16 The installment includes a little over a half of Chapter 32 and ends with Sambo’s reply to Tom, “[…] sure, I dunno what I’s to do with more” (UTC, p. 494). Uncle Tom’s Cabin starts on column 2, page 3. 17 The installment includes two-thirds of Chapter 33 and stops with, “‘She’s got ’em all in her, I believe!’ said Legree; and, growling a brutal oath, he proceeded to the weighing room” (UTC, p. 506). 18 The installment includes two-thirds of Chapter 40 and ends with Tom saying to Legree, “I know, Mas’r; but I can’t tell anything. I can die!” (UTC, p. 582). 19 The installment carries about a quarter of Chapter 42 and closes on Legree reacting to Cassy’s “ghost”: “He sprang out of bed, and pulled at the door. It was shut and locked, and the man fell down in a swoon” (UTC, p. 596). 20 The installment, which includes about half of Chapter 44, ends just before George’s letter, with “Political troubles in France, at last, led the family again to seek an asylum in this country” (UTC, p. 608).


Appendix 2

American Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin

212

Dated Editions 1852–1853 (John P. Jewett) Date

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

1st impression 2nd impression: modifications 10,000 15,000 17,000

This table of editions, which does not pretend to exhaustivity, was compiled from the volumes examined in various institutions, the National Union Catalog (NUC), Margaret Hildreth’s bibliography (Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Bibliography, 1976), E. Bruce Kirkham’s article on “The First Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” the catalogues of a number of university libraries, The Publishers’ Weekly (later The Publishers Weekly, here PW), Publishers’ Trade List Annual (PTLA), The American Catalogue (AC), The United States Catalog: Books in Print (BIP), The Cumulative Book Index (CBI), The United States Catalog Supplement (USCS). British editions are mentioned only when they were sold in the United States. This table does not include editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin aimed at a juvenile audience. However, it is possible that lists compiled by Hildreth and the other sources include children’s editions not mentioned as such. “Pages” refers to the number of volumes and pages. “Portrait” will stand for portrait of the author. “Notes” will include the following information whenever it applies: the “thousand” statement (1852–1877), the absence of the original subtitle (“Life Among the Lowly”), the absence of Stowe’s original preface for Jewett’s first edition (referred to as “preface”), the addition of authorial, allographic or editorial prefaces, introductions, afterwords, the abbreviation of the text, the reference for those of the editions that I have not examined (catalog, book, journal, or institution holding the copy). NUC (National Union Catalog). This might well be a mistake. According to NUC, this particular edition is held at the University of California, San Diego, La Jolla. The director of the Mandeville Special Series Library has informed me that they have no such edition; they do, however, hold an edition bearing the slug “70th Thousand.” In all likelihood, there is no edition bearing a 17th thousand slug.


1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols: 1: x, 312p 6 ill. + title-page 2: iv, 322p vignette (Billings) 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same

Notes

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol.: 166p No ill. 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same

10

20,000 25,000 30,000 40,000 50,000 60,000 70,000 75,000 80,000 85,000 90,000 95,000 100,000 105,000 110,000 115,000 120,000 153,000 copies 306,000 volumes 163,00010 173,000 193,000

213

NUC + Kirkham (“The First Editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin”). Kirkham. Kirkham. Kirkham. Hildreth.

Notes

Appendix 2

Date

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

11

203,00011 213,000 223,000 230,00013 233,000 245,00014 263,00015 265,000 275,000 285,000 295,000 305,000 306,000 308,000 Illustrated Edition

Hildreth. Until 213,000, volumes are dated 1852; following volumes frequently bear two different dates on the cover and the title page (1852 and 1853); after 295,000 (included), volumes bear the date 1853, on both cover and title page. 13 Hildreth. 14 NUC. 15 NUC. 16 Reissued in 1882–1883 by Houghton, Mifflin, with illustrations, for a “theater edition,” to be sold exclusively in connection with a theatrical adaptation of the play, and not to be resold to the trade (see Chapter 6). 17 This edition is placed here for greater legibility. The illustrated edition came out in December 1852, with the title page bearing the date 1853. It was published at roughly the same time as the cheap edition bearing the slug “153,000 copies,” and was reprinted in February 1853. It bore no thousand statement. 12


1852 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1852 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1853?12 Boston 1853? Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1853? Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1853? Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. Same 1853 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols: 1: x, 312p 6 ill. + title-page 2: iv, 322p vignette (Billings) 1853 Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol. 166p No ill. 1853 Boston John P. Jewett Same Same 1853 Boston John P. Jewett Same Same 1853 Boston John P. Jewett Same Same 1853 Boston John P. Jewett Same Same 185316 Boston John P. Jewett Same Same 1853 Boston John P. Jewett 2 vols: 1: x, 312p 6 ill. + title-page 2: iv, 322p vignette (Billings) Boston John P. Jewett 1 vol.: 560p 153 ill. (Billings) 185317

Notes

214

Date

Date

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

1863 Boston Ticknor and Fields 2 vols in 1: 6 ill. + title-page 1: x, 312p vignette (Billings) 2: iv, 322p 1866 Boston Ticknor and Fields Same Same 1868? Boston Ticknor and Fields Same Same 1869 Boston Fields, Osgood Same Same and Co. 1872 Boston James R. Osgood Same Same 1873 Boston James R. Osgood Same Same 1875 Boston James R. Osgood Same Same 1876 Boston James R. Osgood Same Same 1877 Boston James R. Osgood Same Same 1879, repr. Boston Houghton, Osgood Illustrated Edition 1 vol.: lxvii, 529p 100 + G. Thomas 1881, 1882, and Co., later (Holiday Edition)20 1883, 1884, Houghton, Mifflin 1885, 1888 and Co. (1881) and 188921

Notes 311,000 (NUC) 314 00018 316,000 322 000 324 000 333 00019 (NUC/Hildreth) 335 000 + new intro. by Stowe + bibliography by G. Bullen

Appendix 2

1863–1893 (Ticknor and Fields and Successors)

18

Hildreth. The Sheet Stock Account of Ticknor and Fields and their successors also indicate the printing of copies bearing the following slugs: 312,000, 313,000, etc., i.e., all the thousands between 311,000 and 341,000 (this last was printed in October 1877). fMS Am 2030.2 (22), Houghton Library. 20 The cost books of the publishers refer to this edition as “Illustrated,” then “Holiday Edition” to distinguish it from its cheaper version issued in February 1879, which is noted in the cost books as “Illustrated $2 Edition.” 21 This edition came out in December 1878, with the title page bearing the date 1879. It was illustrated by G. Thomas and T.R. Macquoid. For reasons of space, only Thomas is mentioned in this table. 19

215

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

22

+ 1879 intro. Stowe

+ 1879 intro. Stowe

+ 1879 intro. Stowe

NUC and Hildreth for the 1887 and 1891 reprints. In this reprint of the 1885 “Popular Edition,” seven illustrations by G. Thomas have been added to the frontispiece by the same artist. 24 This edition is still listed in the 1905–1906 Riverside Press “Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.” 23


1885, repr. Boston Houghton, Mifflin Popular 1 vol.: xlii, 500p Frontispiece 1886, 1887, Edition (G. Thomas) 1888, 1889, 1890, 1891 and 189222 1892, repr. Boston Houghton, Mifflin New Holiday 2 vols: 1: lviii, 309p Around 140 1893 Edition 2: ix, 382p E.W. Kemble 1892 Boston Houghton, Mifflin Universal Edition, 1 vol.: vi, 273p Ill. front cover No. 43, Extra (Riverside Paper Series) 1892, repr. Boston Houghton, Mifflin New Popular 1 vol.: xlii, 500p 8 ill. G. Thomas 1894 Edition23 1893, repr. Boston Houghton, Mifflin Brunswick Edition 1 vol.:1viii, 566p Title-page vignette 1894 and later24

Notes

216

Date

Date

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

Notes

(1893) Boston Charles E. Brown 1 vol.: viii, 566p Portrait Inscription: “Ned Raymond / Christmas 1893”25 1893, repr. Chicago Tennyson Neely Neely’s Popular 1 vol.: ix, 477p Illuminated letters Biography 1894 Library and tailpieces 1893 New York Hurst 278p (NUC) 1893 New York F.M. Lupton The Arm Chair 1 vol.: 175p Ill. front cover + Library 12 ill. (1894) New York F.M. Lupton Elite Series (166) (NUC) 1 vol.: lxvii, 529p 100 + (G.Thomas) 1879 intro. Stowe and 1894 Boston Houghton, Mifflin New Edition26 biblio. G.Bullen 1894 Philadelphia D. McKay Plates (NUC) c.1894, repr Philadelphia Henry Altemus 1 vol.: xxii, 634p Ill. title page + Intro. W.S. Walsh 1895, 1896 frontispiece and 189927 c. 1894 Chicago Montgomery Ward Souvenir Edition 1 vol.: xxii, 634p No ill. Intro. W.S. Walsh28

217

25 This edition is similar to Houghton, Mifflin’s Brunswick edition, although Brown added a portrait of Stowe as a frontispiece and removed the title-page vignette. Houghton, Mifflin tried to restrain the publication and sale of Brown’s edition as an “unlawful imitation” (“To the Trade,” PW, 16 December 1893: 1010). 26 Reprint of the 1879 Illustrated (Holiday) Edition. 27 NUC for the 1895 and 1899 reprints. Altemus brought out UTC in different series: New Illustrated Vademecum, Valenciennes, Petit Trianon, Beauxarts, Marqueterie, La Belle Fleur, l’Art Nouveau (see PTLA 1899–1901). 28 This edition (copyright Henry Altemus, and manufactured at Altemus’ Bookbindery, Philadelphia) was probably sold after Stowe’s death in 1896 to the customers of Montgomery Ward and Co., one the nation’s first large mail-order catalog businesses. Their 1895 catalog shows that they sold Burt’s editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, among others.

Appendix 2

1893–2006

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

Notes

29 Hildreth + NUC. PW, 25 January 1896, Index to books published in 1895; PW, 29 January 1898, Index to books published in 1897, with, in the latter case, an 1896 copyright date, which might apply to the Introductory Sketch. NUC mentions a reprint (1905). This edition is still listed in the 1905–1906 Riverside Press “Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company,” as well as in BIP 1928. 30 For F. Warne selling his editions in the US, see PTLA 1898. The undated copy of the “Prize Edition” I have seen is inscribed: “To Elsie With Charlie’s love December 20 02” (HBSC). 31 This edition is still listed (as “Library Edition”) in the 1905–1906 Riverside Press “Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.” 32 Key is abridged. 33 Issued in a limited edition (250 sets) sold by subscription, and in a Riverside edition.


c.1895, Boston Houghton, Mifflin Riverside xviii, 500p With Introductory 1896, repr. Literature Series Sketch29 1905 and No. 88, quadruple later number (1895) Boston Houghton, Mifflin 1 vol.: 475p (NUC) 1895, repr.30 London F. Warne Prize Library 1 vol.: viii, 478p Frontispiece University of Virginia and for dating New York c. 1895, Boston Houghton, Mifflin Illustrated 1 vol.: lxxxv, 529p Frontispiece 1879 intro. 1896, repr. Library Edition (B.W. Clinedinst) + Stowe + biography + title-page vignette biblio. G. Bullen31 (Kemble) + 100 + ill. (G. Thomas) 1896 Boston Houghton, Mifflin The Writings of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Frontispiece 1879 intro. Stowe + Clinedinst + vignette biblio. Bullen (revised Harriet Beecher and Key,32 Stowe (16 vols, 2 vols: 1 xciii, 339p Kemble, + vignette and updated) + vols 1 and 2)33 2: vii, 453p Woodbury + biography + essay portraits Stowe C.D. Warner

218

Date

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

Notes

1896 Boston Houghton, Mifflin Riverside School (Hildreth/AC Library 1895–1900) 1896 Boston H.M. Caldwell Illustrated Library (Hildreth/AC of Famous Books 1895–1900) No. 247 1896 New York Hurst and Co. Cambridge Classics (Hildreth/AC 1895–1900) No. 210 1896 London George Bell 1 vol.: xx, 483p Ill. Havelock K. Introductory Remarks and and Sons Browne and Rev. James Sherman34 New York John Leech 1896 Boston H.M. Caldwell Superb Series 2 vols Ill. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and No. 20 Ten Nights in a Bar Room (W.W. Pratt) 35 1897 Boston Houghton, Mifflin Illustrated Library 1 vol.: lxxxv, 529p 100 + ill. 1879 intro. Stowe + Edition (G. Thomas) biblio. G. Bullen c. 1897, Philadelphia J.E. Potter Art Memorial 1 vol.: 615p Ill. Biography + “Story of repr. 1898 Edition (1)36 c. 1897 Chicago Dominion Same (2) Same 106 ill. Eckman, Thatcher ...

Appendix 2

Date

the Book” + “Key to the Characters”… (Prof. Charles Morris)37 Same

The Beinecke library holds a copy of this edition, a facsimile reprint of an edition published in 1852 by H.G. Bohn (London), one of the few British editions that retained both the original subtitle of the novel and Stowe’s preface to the first American edition. 35 Hildreth, AC 1895–1900, BIP 1899. 36 The numbers will make it easier to distinguish between the two series of memorial editions: one appeared under four imprints, the other under six imprints. 37 NUC. 34

219

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

Notes

38

UVa web. All the “Art Memorial” editions include this note: “Copyright 1897 by John E. Potter.” Thompson and Thomas’s differs from the others in that it has fewer illustrations and a smaller number of pages. 40 A Swedish edition with these illustrations came out in 1895 (Göteborg, T. Hedlund, see UVa web), was issued in English by Cassell (London, 1896), and was reprinted by John C. Winston (Philadelphia) in 1897, both in Swedish and in English (Winston’s edition uses British spelling). NUC lists a 568-page edition by Winston, tentatively dated (19--?), still listed in BIP 1928. Winston published a 568-page edition in “Every Boys Library”; the volume I examined was undated. 41 Name given to the edition in the sample book kept at the HBSC. 39


1897 Chicago John P. Monarch Same (3) Same Same Same38 c. 1897 Chicago Thompson and Same (4) 1 vol.: 542p 49 ill. Eckman, Same39 Thomas Thomas Thatcher … 1897 Phila- John C. Winston (Memorial 1 vol.: xiv, 680p + 100 ill. (NUC/Hildreth delphia edition) (1) Jenny Nystrom- /AC 1895–1900)40 Stoopendaal (Swedish) c. 1897 Boston George M. Smith (2) Same Same No preface by Stowe; unsigned intro; British spelling c. 1897 Phila- International (3) Same Same Same delphia Publishing Co. c. 1897 Phila- Syndicate (4)41 Same Same Same delphia Publishing Co. 1897 Phila- Standard (5) Same Same (NUC/Hildreth) delphia Publishing Co. c. 1897 New York Eaton and Mains (6) Same Same (NUC) (1897) Chicago E.A. Weeks Enterprise Series (Hildreth/PW/ No. 97 AC 1895–1900)

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c. 1897 New York Thomas Y. 1 vol.: vi, 490p Ill. title-page + Crowell frontispiece (C. Copeland) 1897 New York T.Y. Crowell Luxembourg 1 vol.: 490p (Hildreth/ Illustrated AC 1895–1900)42 Library c. 1897 New York T.Y. Crowell The Astor Prose 1 vol.: vi, 490p Ill. (Harvard University Series Library) 1898, repr. New York D. Appleton The World’s Great 1 vol.: xxi, 527p 8 ill. intro. Thomas W. 190143 Books/Aldine Higginson + appendix: Edition Stowe’s 1879 intro, abridged 1898, repr. Boston Houghton, Mifflin Cambridge Classics (Hildreth/PW/AC 1895–1900)44 1898 Boston Houghton, Mifflin Hartford Edition Portrait (PW45/AC 1895–1900) 1899 Boston Houghton, Mifflin New Popular 1vol.: xlii, 500p Portrait + 15 ill. 1879 intro. Stowe46 Edition Kemble 1899 New York R.F. Fenno 1 vol.: 477p 1 illuminated letter + No preface47 1 tailpiece

221

42 This edition is still listed in BIP 1928. BIP 1899 lists five different prices for editions of UTC published by Crowell. Crowell also published UTC in the Waldorf Library, the Standard Library, the Westminster series. 43 NUC for the 1901 reprint. 44 PW, 28 January 1899: 205. This edition is listed in the 1905–1906 Riverside Press “Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.” It is still listed in BIP 1928. 45 See ad in PW, 28 January 1899: 203, and, in the same number of PW, the list of books published in 1898. 46 This edition is still listed (as “Popular Edition”) in the 1905–1906 Riverside Press “Portrait Catalogue of the Books Published by Houghton, Mifflin and Company.” 47 UTC appears in the Wedgwood Series (PTLA 1899).

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48 49

Two copyright mentions on the title page: “Copyright, 1893, by F. Tennyson Neely. Copyright, 1901, By Hurst and Co.” CBI 1911 for the 1910 reprint, Hildreth for the 1914 reprint, NUC for the 1922, 1925 and 1929 reprints.


1900 New York Street and Smith (Hildreth) (1900, New York G. Munro’s Sons Ivy Series No. 63 1 vol.: 467p (NUC) c. 1898) c.190148 New York Hurst and Co. 1 vol.: viii, 477p Ill. Biography 1901 Boston H.M. Caldwell 2 vols (Hildreth) 1902 Chicago Dominion (AC 1900–1905) 1904, repr. New York Macmillan 1 vol.: xi, 508p Ill. Simon Harmon (Hildreth/AC 1900– 1922 Vedder 1905/BIP 1921–1924) c. 1904 New York R.F. Fenno 1 vol.: 475p Ill. James H. Lowell “Embellished with + photographs from Scenes and Uncle Tom play Illustrations” 1905 New York R.F. Fenno 1 vol.: ix, 467p Ill. University of Pennsylvania Library 1905 New York T.Y. Crowell Thin Paper Classics (Hildreth/AC 1905– 1907) (CBI 1908) 1908 Chicago Brewer, Barse 1908, repr. New York Bowman Bowman’s 1 vol.: 448p Ill. Louis Betts (Hildreth/AC 1908– 1909 Illustrated Library 1910/CBI 1908 and of World-Favorite 1909) Books 1909, repr. London/ J.M. Dent/ Everyman’s 1 vol.: xvi, 442p Ill. Jessie MacGregor Ernest Rhys, ed./ 1910, 1914, New York E.P. Dutton Library for preface Rev. J. 1922, 1925, Young People Sherman (1852) + 192949 intro. (Rhys)/no subtitle/British spelling

222

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1910 Boston/ Fireside Edition, 1 vol.: xl, 500p Frontispiece (c.1899) New York Novels and Stories, vol. 1 1910 New York Platt and Peck 1912 Boston H.M. Caldwell 1913 New York Sully and University Edition Works: 9 vols Kleinteich 1915 New York Crowell Crowell’s Pocket 1 vol.: 490p Library 1916 New York Hubbell-Leavens 1 vol.: 508p c. 1918, Boston Houghton Mifflin Riverside Library 1 vol.: viii, 500p repr. 1923 1919 Boston Houghton Mifflin Holiday Edition c. 1923 New York J.H. Sears The Reader’s 1 vol.: iv, 244p Ill. title-page Library 1925 New York J.H. Sears American Home Classics 1925 Boston Houghton Mifflin 1 vol.: xlii, 500p Frontispiece (Kemble) 1926 New York Macmillan Modern Readers’ 1 vol.: xiv, 432p No ill. Series 1927 New York F. Warne and Co. 1 vol.: 478p 1 vol.: vi, 442p Ill. lining-papers 1928 New York Grosset and Dunlap This edition is certainly the one listed as “Popular Edition” in BIP 1928.

(NUC) (CBI 1911) (Hildreth) (USCS 1912–1917) (Hildreth/USCS 1912–1917) (Hildreth/USCS 1912–1917) University of Tennessee Library (Hildreth/USCS 1918–1921) Abridged, no subtitle, no preface (Hildreth/BIP 1928) 1879 intro. Stowe50 Intro. Francis Pendleton Gaines, no subtitle, no preface (Hildreth) (NUC)

223

50

Notes

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(Hildreth/BIP 1928) (Hildreth/BIP 1928)51 (Hildreth/BIP 1928) (Hildreth/BIP 1928) (NUC/Hildreth/CBI 1928–1932)52 Abridged, no subtitle, no preface Intro. Raymond Weaver (Hildreth/CBI 1938–1942) (Hildreth/CBI 1938–1942) Comics54 Intro. R. Weaver

I have examined an undated copy of this edition (ix, 467 pages). It was already listed in PTLA 1898. CBI notes 508 pages. 53 NUC for the 1947 reprint (“Fourteenth Impression”). 54 Reprinted in 1997 as part of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Classics Illustrated, Acclaim Books Study guide, with an essay by Karen Karbiener (Vernon, NJ, Acclaim Books, June 1997). 51 52


1928 Rock Augustana Island, IL 1928 New York A.L. Burt Home Library 1928 Boston Houghton Mifflin New Holiday Edition 1928 New York J.S. Ogilvie 1929 Boston Houghton Mifflin Riverside Library 1 vol.: 500p Ill. Series c. 1929, repr.194753 New York Coward McCann 1 vol.: 446p Ill. James Daugherty 1938 New York Limited Editions 1 vol.: xv, 294p 16 lithographs Club Miguel Covarrubias 1938 New York Books Registered Guild Library 1938 New York Books Library Edition/ Duo-Tone Classics July 1944, New York Gilberton Classics Illustrated Pages not Ill. Rolland H. repr. 1946, No. 15 numbered Livingstone 1969 Modern Library 1 vol.: xxiii, 552p No ill. 1948, repr. New York Modern Library of the World’s Best Books

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1952 New York Dodd, Mead and Co. Great Illustrated 1 vol.: 442p 16 ill. Classics 1957 New York Fine Editions Press 1 vol.: x, 372p No ill. 1960 Garden Doubleday Dolphin Master 1 vol.: 516p Ill. front cover City, NY 1961, repr. London/ Dent/Dutton Everyman’s Library 1 vol.: 442p No ill. New York (1852) 1962 Cambridge, Belknap Press/ John Harvard 1 vol.: xxviii, 460p Facsimile of first Mass. Harvard UP Library edition title-page 1962, repr. New York Collier Books Classic Collier 1 vol.: 511p Ill. front cover 1966 Books (1962), New York Heritage Press 1 vol.: xv, 294p 16 lithographs c. 1938 Miguel Covarrubias 1963, repr. New York Washington 1 vol.: xx, 458p Ill. front cover 197756 Square Press 1964 New York Paul S. Eriksson 1 vol.: 591p Ill. (Billings + Cruikshank) 1964 New York Bramhall House Same Same

Notes Intro. Langston Hughes; no subtitle Intro. Charles Angoff “A reprint of the first edition” Preface Rev. J. Sherman + intro. Van Wyck Brooks + bibliography Kenneth S. Lynn, ed.; intro, chronology, “History of the Text.” 1879 intro. Stowe + intro. Dwight L. Dumond + biblio. = Limited Editions Club (1938)55 Intro. Russell B. Nye

Appendix 2

Date

“The Annotated Uncle Tom’s Cabin”; notes and intro. Philip Van Doren Stern. No subtitle Same

225

55 Dating: CBI 1961–1962. In 1935, George Macy, the publisher of the Limited Editions Club, launched the Heritage Press as a series of unlimited, less expensive reprints of titles first issued by the Limited Editions Club. 56 Harvard University Libraries for reprint.

Place

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Notes

CBI 1963–1964 notes that Taplinger also uses the imprint Eriksson. Amazon.com for reprint. 59 Prefaces by Stowe for the following editions: Jewett, Bosworth, Tauchnitz, Charpentier, Librairie Nouvelle; 1879 intro. 60 1981 edition: revised and updated bibliography. 57 58


1964 New York Taplinger57 Same (Hildreth) (1964) New York (C.N. Potter) Same (University of Rochester Library) 1965, repr. New York Harper and Harper Classics 1 vol.: xxvii, 451p Ill. front cover 1879 intro. Stowe, 197058 Row (1965)/ abridged + intro. HarperPerennial Jeremy Larner + (1970) bio. and biblio. (Frank N. Magill) 1965 London/ Oxford Classic American 1 vol.: lxxv, 511p No ill. 6 prefaces/intros by New York University Press Texts Stowe; John A. Woods ed.: intro. + note on text, biblio. + notes. American spelling59 1966, repr. New York New American Signet Classics 1 vol.: vi, 494p Ill. front cover Afterword John 1981 Library (1966)/ (1966)/vi, 496p William Ward + Penguin Group (1981) biblio.60 (1981) c. 1967 New York Airmont Airmont Classics 1 vol.: 414p Ill. front cover Intro. Robert A. Publishing Co. Corrigan 1967 New York AMS Press Facsimile of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Frontispiece + vignette “Writings of and Key, Harriet Beecher 2 vols: 1: xciii, 339p Stowe” Riverside 2: vii, 453p Edition, in 16 vols

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1969 Columbus, Charles E. Merrill Charles E. Merrill 2 vols in 1: Ill. Billings for Facsimile of Jewett’s Ohio Program in 1: xviii, 312p 1st edition 1st edition; intro. American 2: iv, 322p Howard Mumford Literature Jones + note on text (1972)61 Boston Houghton Mifflin Riverside Library 1 vol.: viii, 500p Ill. dust jacket 1972 New York Dodd, Mead and Ill. (Hildreth, BIP 1974) Co 1972 New York E.P. Dutton Everyman BIP 1974 1975 Hildesheim, Georg Olms Anglistica and UTC and Key, 2 vols Reprint of “Writings Germany Americana Series of Harriet Beecher No. 156 Stowe,” Riverside Edition62 1976 Secaucus, Longriver Press 1 vol.: 372p (Alameda County NJ Library) c. 1976 New York Hart 1 vol.: xxviii, 561p Ill. from different No preface by Stowe, editions of UTC but 1879 intro.; preface Nancy Goldberg 1979 Norwalk, Easton Press 100 Greatest 1 vol.: 294 or 295p Frontispiece: Intro. R. Weaver63 CT Books Ever portrait of author + Written, lithographs Collector’s Edition Miguel Covarrubias (subscription) 1981, repr. New York Penguin Penguin American 1 vol.: 629p Ill. front cover Intro. Ann Douglas + 1982, 1983, Library biblio. (NUC) 1984, 1985 BIP 1993–1994 for dating. Hildreth notes an edition (1 volume, 500 pages; 196-?). Listed in BIP 1993–1994. 63 See abebooks.com, and advertisment in The Economist (2–8 January 1999). Probably similar to the 1938 Limited Editions Club.

Appendix 2

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61

227

62

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Notes

Amazon.com for 1983 reprint, Cat. of the University of California, Berkeley, for 1989 reprint. BIP 1993–1994 mentions this 1982 edition as a reprint. 66 The table of contents, similar to that of the initial 1948 edition, announces an introduction and the author’s preface, both actually missing from the two copies of this edition that I have examined. 67 Reprint of 1981 Penguin American Library edition. 68 Kazin’s afterword = his introduction to the 1981 Bantam Classics and the 1982 Buccaneer Books editions, but in an abridged form. 64 65


1981, repr. New York Bantam Bantam Classics 1 vol.: xviii, 451p Ill. front cover Intro. Alfred Kazin + 1983, 198964 biblio. 198265 Cutchogue, Buccaneer Books 1 vol.: xviii, 446p No ill. “Limited Edition,” no NY subtitle, intro. Alfred Kazin 1982 New York Literary Classics Library of America 1 vol.: 1477p Ill. dust jacket + ill. UTC, Minister’s of the United States Billings for 1st Wooing, Oldtown Folks edition in 1 vol.; Kathryn K. Sklar, ed.; chronology, notes, note on texts 1984 Franklin Franklin Library The 100 Greatest 1 vol.: xii, 477p Ill. Thomas B. Allen “A Limited Edition” + Center, PA Masterpieces of booklet “Notes from American Literature the Editors” 1985 New York Random House Modern Library 1 vol.: vi, 552p Ill. dust jacket No preface66 198667 New York Penguin Penguin Classics 1 vol.: 629p Ill. front cover Ann Douglas, ed.: intro., bibliog., note on text; no preface by Stowe The World’s Best 1 vol.: 416p Ill. Afterword Alfred c. 1991 Pleasantville, Reader’s Digest NY Reading Kazin68

228

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Notes

1991 New York Vintage Books The Library of 1 vol.: xx, 529p Ill. front cover K.K. Sklar, ed.: America chronology, notes, note on text; intro. James M. McPherson 1992 Irvine, CA Reprint Services Reprint of vols 1 UTC and Key: 2 vols Ill. University of Corp. and 2 of California Library, “The Writings” Berkeley 1993, repr. London/ J.M. Dent/ Everyman Library 1 vol.: xxxvi, 594p Ill. front cover Christopher Bigsby, 1997 Vermont Charles E. Tuttle ed.; published with Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass; intro. Rev. J. Sherman (1852); intro. + chronologies, notes, essays, biblio. … British spelling 1993 Boston G.K. Hall Large Print 1 vol.: 705p No ill. Abridged (no Chapter Perennial Bestseller 45) 1993 Waterville, Thorndike Press Limited Edition 1 vol.: 688p (BIP 2004–2005) ME 199469 New York W.W. Norton Norton Critical 1 vol.: ix, 587p Ill. Elizabeth Ammons, Editions ed. preface, notes, chronology, biblio. + “Backgrounds and Contexts” + “Criticism”

229

69 Various editions of BIP (for instance 1993–1994) give 1993 for the publication date. My copy of this edition only mentions a 1994 copyright.

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Notes

70

New introduction, actually a reprint of his article in The New York Review of Books (1994).


c. 1994 New York Macmillan College Library of Liberal 1 vol.: ix, 470p No ill. Notes and intro. Publishing Arts George McMichael 1995 New York Barnes and Noble Barnes and Noble 1 vol.: xiii, 447p Ill. front cover Intro. William Mackey Classics Jr c. 1995 New York Alfred A. Knopf Everyman’s Library 1 vol.: xxix, 494p No ill. Intro. Alfred Kazin; No. 206 biblio. and chronology; note on text70 1996 New York Random House The Modern 1 vol.: xiii, 637p Ill. dust jacket biography; no subtitle, Library of the no preface World’s Best Books 1998 New York Penguin Putnam Signet Classics 1 vol.: xxii, 490p Ill. front cover Intro. Darryl Pinckney + biblio. 1998 Oxford/ Oxford University Oxford World’s 1 vol.: xxxiv, 536p Ill. front cover + Jean Fagan Yellin, ed.; New York Press Classics map intro, notes, chronology, biblio., appendices (including “The Heroic Slave” by F. Douglass); no subtitle. American spelling 1999 New York Oxford University The Oxford 1 vol.: xiii, 560p Ill. front cover Joan D. Hedrick, ed.; Press Harriet Beecher intro., chronology, Stowe Reader biblio., other writings 1999 Temecula, Reprint Services Notable American (BIP 2004–2005) Corp. Authors CA

230

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1999 Anaheim, Cyber Classics 1 vol.: 732p Large print71 CA 1999 BNI Pubns Limited Edition 1 vol.: 732p (BIP 2004–2005) 2001 New York Random House, Modern Library 1 vol.: xxiii, 662p Ill. front cover Intro. Jane Smiley, Classics biog., “Commentary” Modern Library72 + “Reading Group Guide,” no preface 2002 Oxford/ Oxford University Oxford World’s 1 vol.: xv, 456p Ill. dust jacket “150th Anniversary New York Press Classics Edition,” intro. Charles Johnson 2002 Bedford, Applewood Books 1 vol.: 248p (BIP 2004–2005) MA 2002 Charleston, Booksurge Booksurge Classics 1 vol.: 560p Amazon.com SC 2003 New York Barnes and Noble Barnes and Noble 1 vol.: xlii, 530p Ill. front cover George Stade, ed., Classics biography, chronology, biblio., notes, intro. Amanda Claybaugh, “Comments and Questions” 2004 Ann Arbor, Ann Arbor (BIP 2004–2005) MI Media Group 2004 New York Simon and Schuster/ Enriched Classics 1 vol.: 608p (BIP 2004–2005) Pocket Revised Edition BIP 2004–2005/Amazon.com. Oct. 2005. Copyright (undated) Buccaneer Books. Random House/The Modern Library also published Uncle Tom’s Cabin as an electronic book in 2000. A number of other publishers have also brought out electronic editions of the novel. These and audiobooks have not been included in this table of editions.

Appendix 2

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71

231

72

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73

http://www.barnesandnoble.com. Issued in hardcover in 2004, in paperback in 2005. See http://www.barnesandnoble.com. 75 See their website: http://www.wadsworth.com. 74


2004 New York Barnes and Noble Collector’s Library 1 vol.: 640p “Complete and Unabridged”73 2004, New York Barnes and Noble Barnes and Noble 1 vol.: 454p Ill. front cover George Stade, ed., 200574 Classics intro Amanda Claybaugh 2005 Belmont, Thomson Wadsworth 1 vol.: 496p CA Wadsworth75 Classics of American Literature 2005 Waterville, Thorndike Press Largeprint Edition 1 vol.: 840p Amazon.com ME 2005 Fairfield, 1st World Library 1 vol.: 728p Amazon.com IA 2005 Mineola, Dover Thrift Editions 1 vol.: 384p Ill. front cover Amazon.com NY 2005 Ann Arbor, Scholarly Publishing Michigan Historical Amazon.com MI Office, University of Reprint Series Michigan Library 2007 New York W.W. Norton The Annotated 1 vol.: 736p Illustrated Henry Louis Gates, Series Jr, and Hollis Robbins, eds

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1890s76 New York John B. Alden 1 vol.: ix, 467p No ill. Inscription: “Norma E. Schmidt April? 1898” 1890s New York W.L. Allison 1 vol.: ix, 467p 2 portraits of Stowe See M.A. Donohue, + 25 ill. Cruikshank undated77 1990s, Mattituck, Amereon (BIP1994–5/2004– repr. NY 2005) Late Garden City, American 1 vol.: viii, 492p Frontispiece: portrait Biography78 20th NY Masterpiece century Library 1890s New York American News The Favorite 1 vol.: 297p Ill. front cover “Special New Cy Library No. 139 Edition,” abridged, no subtitle 1890s New York American Publishers Oxford Edition 1 vol.: 475p No ill. Inscription: “Orpha L. Corporation Greene Christmas ’97” 1912? New York Barse and Hopkins (Hildreth/BIP 1928) Art Type Edition/ 1 vol.: viii, 372p No ill. Abridged (no chapter New York Books The World’s Popular 45), no subtitle, no Classics preface 197-? Deer Park, Brown Book Co. (Hildreth/BIP 1974) NY In this column, approximate dating will be suggested whenever possible, based on inscriptions, publishers’ histories, includings firms’ addresses, illustrations, and so forth. 77 Same plates as M.A. Donohue, slight typographical differences between John B. Alden and W.L. Allison. 78 “The typography, endpapers, and binding of this volume were designed for the American Masterpiece Library by Warren Chappell.”

Appendix 2

Undated Editions (Publishers by Alphabetical Order)

76

233

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(Hildreth/BIP 1928) (Hildreth/BIP 1928) “Wrapper and frontispiece from ‘The Players Series’”79 For the rest, see M.A. Donohue, undated (NUC)

Different binding and format Different binding No subtitle

79 Frontispiece signed Otis Skinner and ? (illegible). Skinner started playing Uncle Tom in the 1870s and still played Uncle Tom in 1933, he was 76 then (see Gossett, Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture, p. 385). The photograph is that of an old man. Hildreth mentions an edition published by Burt (with no other detail), and follows the date (1912) with a question mark. BIP 1899 lists four prices for editions of UTC published by Burt. UTC also appeared in the following series: Montauk, Cornell, Mayflower, Lotus, Manhattan, Irving (PTLA 1898–1901). 80 BIP 1899 lists four prices for editions of UTC published by Caldwell. It also appeared in the following series: Berkeley, Commonwealth, Empyreal, De Novo, Calumet, Autumn Leaf, Chef d’Oeuvre, Florentine, Unique, Kalon, Chateau (PTLA 1898–1901).


1928? New York A.L. Burt Oxford Series 1928? New York A.L. Burt New Pocket Edition of Standard Classics 1933 or New York A.L. Burt 1 vol.: ix, 467p Ill. later New York A.L. Burt Burt’s Library of 1 vol.: ix, 467p the World’s Best Books 2 vols in 1: 5 ill. 1890s?80 New York H.M. Caldwell 1:iv, 339p 2: 352p New York H.M. Caldwell Alcazar Series Same 5 ill. (the same) New York H.M. Caldwell Superb Edition Same 5 ill. (the same) New York H.M. Caldwell 1 vol.: ix, 467p 5 ill., 1 different from previous Caldwell editions

Notes

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Phila- H.T. Coates (Hildreth/BIP 1899)81 delphia Chicago W.B. Conkey 1 vol.: vii, 502p No ill. Chicago M.A. Donohue 1 vol.: ix, 467p No ill. = W.L. Allison, un dated, minus the illust. Chicago M.A. Donohue 1 vol.: 450p (NUC) Chicago M.A. Donohue 1 vol.: 614p Ill. (NUC) Ca. 1900 Chicago Donohue Brothers Complete Edition 2 vols in 1: Frontispiece: Inscription: “To Eddie 1: 339p portrait from Aunt Belle/ 2: 352p Christmas 1900/ Louisville, Ky”82 1890s Chicago Donohue, 2 vols in 1: No ill. Inscription: “Bertha F. Henneberry and Co. 1: iv, 339p Smith/Franklin/Conn 2: 352p /Dec. 25, 1896” 1890s/ New York Federal Book Co. 1 vol.: 450p Frontispiece Biography, inscription: early “To Bert/From 1900s Willie/4–8–1903” 1920s ? Newark, Graham C.E. (BIP 1928) NJ 1905 New York Grosset and Dunlap 1 vol.: viii, 448p 5 ill. Louis Betts British spelling83 or New York Grosset and Dunlap 1 vol.: 475p Front-cover = Am. Publishers later photograph Corp., undated In the late 1890s, Coates published UTC in the Laurel Library and the Alta series (PTLA 1898–1900). See similar editions in undated two volumes in one editions published by H.M. Caldwell, Home Book, Hurst and Co. In Donohue Brothers, the preface does not bear page numbers. 83 Copyright of the illustrations: the property of Herbert S. Stone and Co. The edition with the illustrations by Louis Betts is listed in PTLA 1905, together with another edition in the Good Value Books series.

Appendix 2

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81 82

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84

The movie was released in 1927. Pennsylvania State University. See 1897 Art Memorial Editions. The Henneberry edition is listed in PTLA 1901, together with an edition in the Illustrated New Century Library. 86 UTC appeared in the following series: Clover Leaf, Marguerite, Handy Volumes (PTLA 1899–1901). 87 The University of Virginia Catalogue notes “Dresden Edition”; however, that mention is not to be found on the copy held in the library and which has retained its original covers. 88 The University of Virginia Special Collections Catalog notes: “Published by C.I. Wood, Proprietors of Hood’s Sarsaparilla; ads for Hood before and after text.” 85


1927 New York Grosset and Dunlap 1 vol.: 475p “Illustrated with Same plates as or later84 Scenes from the previous edition Universal Super Jewel Production” Chicago/ Henneberry 1 vol.: 615p Ill. Biography + “Story of New York the Book” + “Key to the Characters” … (Prof. Charles Morris)85 Late 1890s Chicago G.M. Hill (Hildreth/ BIP 1899)86 87 New York Home Book Co. Dresden Edition? 2 vols in 1 No ill. See among others 1: iv, 339p Hurst, Caldwell, 2: 352p undated, 2 vols New York Home Book Co. Hearthstone 2 vols: 1: iv, 339p Frontispiece + ill. Vol.1 only Edition title-page Chicago Homewood 1 vol.: vii, 602p Frontispiece, plates (NUC) C.I. Hood Hood’s Home 1 vol.: 280p (University of Virginia (c. 1900) Lowell, MA Library, No. 1 Library)88 Chicago Hopper, Clarke 1 vol.: x, 467p Ill. (NUC)

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190-? Boston Houghton Mifflin 1 vol.: lxxxv, 529p 106 ill. 1879 intro. Stowe, biography, biblio. G. Bullen89 (1932?) Boston Houghton Mifflin 1 vol.: viii, 500p Ill. (New York Public Library) (195-?) Boston Houghton Mifflin Riverside Library 1 vol.: viii, 500p (NUC) New York Hurst 2 vols in 1: Frontispiece: portrait 1899 article pasted in 1: iv, 339p volume 1. See among 2: 352p others Caldwell, Donohue, undated, 2 vols New York Hurst New Argyle Series 1 vol.: 278p 5 ill. No preface of Popular Authors 1911?90 New York Hurst and Co. 1 vol.: 278p Ill. No preface New York Hurst 1 vol.: vi, 452p Frontispiece: portrait New York Hurst 1 vol.: vi, 452p Ill. Same plates as previous, different frontispiece and several illust.91

NUC, Hildreth. Houghton, Mifflin became Houghton Mifflin in 1908. NUC and Hildreth follow the date with a question mark. The 278-page edition I examined bears an inscription (“Monday / October [illegible] ’11 / New York”). 91 Frontispiece: see Arthur Westbrook, undated (also same plates). An 1895 prospectus for Hurst and Co. lists Uncle Tom’s Cabin in two series: Argyle Series and Arlington Editions. Since the name of series did not always figure on volumes, the editions mentioned in the list above may have been included in these two series. BIP 1899 lists five prices for editions of UTC published by Hurst. In addition to the above, UTC appeared in the following series: Gilt Top Library, Laurelhurst, Emerson, Hawthorne (PTLA 1898–1901).

Appendix 2

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89 90

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92 See Tennyson Neely 1893; in Lupton, the table of contents is numbered viii–x, an obvious mistake since it takes up only two pages. BIP 1899 lists four prices for Lupton’s editions. In addition to those already mentioned, the following series included UTC: Acme, Windsor, Lupton Gilt Top, Daisy, Aldis (PTLA 1898–1901). 93 Hildreth mentions an edition published by D. McKay (no other detail), with the date (1912) followed by a question mark. BIP 1899 lists two prices for McKay’s editions. In PTLA 1898–1900, only the American Classics edition is listed. 94 BIP 1899 lists four prices for editions published by Mershon. It appeared in the following series: Standard, Sterling, Golden Gem, Winona, Favorite Library, Premium Library, New Holly Library (PTLA 1899).


New York F.M. Lupton 1 vol.: viii, 326p Illuminated letters + Inscription: “Jan. 28, tailpieces 1901/To Florence/ From Rhodes”. British spelling; no epigraphs New York F.M. Lupton 1 vol.: x, 477p Frontispiece: portrait Biography (= Federal + illuminated letters Book Co.)92 + tailpieces New York F.M. Lupton 1 vol.: 450p (NUC) New York F.M. Lupton Chimney Corner 1 vol.: 175p Ill. front cover +Plates = F.M. Lupton Series No. 17 12 ill. Arm Chair Library, 1893 Phila- D. McKay American Classic 1 vol.: ix, 467p (NUC)93 delphia Series 1890s New York/ Merrill and Baker World Famous 1 vol.: vii, 469p 6 ill. London Books Rahway, The Mershon Co. 1 vol.: vi, 505p No ill. = A.D. Porter, New NJ York publishing Co., undated Late 1890s Rahway, The Mershon Co 1 vol.: 456p (NUC)94 NJ

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Pages

Illustrations

194-? London Thomas Nelson 1 vol.: 531p Plates and New and Sons York New York New York Empire Edition 1 vol.: vi, 505p No ill. Publishing Co. (1910s?) New York J.S. Ogilvie Special Theatre 1 vol.: 246p 12 ill. Cruikshank Edition Late 1890s Boston L.C. Page Ivorine Gift Books Ill. 1899? Phila- People’s Publishing delphia Co. New York A.D. Porter The Bonnie Series 1 vol.: vi, 505p No ill. Late 1890s Chicago RandMcNally American Library Late 1890s Chicago RandMcNally Standard Books for the Library Late 1890s Chicago RandMcNally 20th Century Series Late 1890s Chicago RandMcNally Alpha Library 1 vol.: vii, 469p. Late 1890s London G. Routledge 106 ill. G. Thomas and and Sons NewYork

Notes (NUC) = Mershon, A.D. Porter, undated Abridged95 PTLA 1898 (Hildreth/BIP 1899) = Mershon, A.D. Porter, New York Publishing Co., undated PTLA 1898 PTLA 1898

Appendix 2

Date

PTLA 1898 PTLA 1898/NUC 1879 intro. Stowe, biblio. G. Bullen96

On this edition, NUC notes “Play Book Series, No. 25.” Hildreth mentions an edition published by Ogilvie (no other detail), with the date (1912) followed by a question mark. 96 PTLA 1898. UTC also appears in the Antique Library (PTLA 1899), the Atlantic Library (PTLA 1900). 95

239

Place

Publisher

Series

Pages

Illustrations

97

PTLA 1898 (NUC/BIP 1928) (Hildreth) (Hildreth/BIP 1928) “No. 45” on front cover (Hildreth) (Hildreth, BIP 1899)99

Note in catalog of University of Virginia Special Collections. Illustration = frontispiece in Hurst, undated, 452 pages. 99 Ward, Lock, Bowden and Co. (London, New York and Melbourne) may have sold their editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the United States (see PW, 30 September 1893: 407); Uncle Tom’s Cabin, or Life among the Lowly, Negro Life in the Slave States of America, iv, 346 pages, illustrated: this is very similar to London, Ward, Lock and Tyler Standard Illustrated Edition, Lily Series, (1873?) = London, Simpkin, Marshall and Co., Popular Illustrated Edition, Run and Read Library, 1857, itself very similar to London, Clarke, Beeton and Co., Shilling Edition (undated but probably 1853). However, the edition I examined (HBSC) had catalogues with prices in shillings. 98


Late 1890s London G. Routledge and Cabin Books and Sons NewYork (1925?) New York J.H. Sears Royal Blue 1 vol.: iv, 244p Library No. 2 1901? Chicago H.S. Stone 1928? New York Street and Smith Select Library (c. 1900)97 New York W.N. Swett 1 vol.: 192p No ill. 1912? Chicago C.E. Thompson Cleveland, Arthur Westbrook 1 vol.: vi, 452p Ill. front cover98 Ohio Phildelphia P.W. Ziegler

Notes

240

Date

Select Bibliography Primary Sources (correspondence, editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin) United States American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, Massachusetts: Book Trades Collection. Baker Library, Harvard Business School, Boston, Massachusetts: Historical Collections: R.G. Dun and Co. Collection. Boston Public Library, Boston, Massachusetts: Rare Books Department: Letters, Manuscripts, Garrison Papers. Columbia University, New York, Rare Books Department. Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford, Connecticut: Collections Acquisitions, Katharine S. Day, Isabella Beecher Hooker, Joseph K. Hooker; Foote, Philip Sang, Steck, Alfred Thatcher, White. Houghton Library, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Archives of Houghton, Mifflin and their predecessors, Autograph File, James Freeman Clarke Papers, Norton Papers. Huntington Library, San Marino, California: James T. Fields Collection, EG Box 58. Library of Congress Manuscript Division, Washinton, DC.: Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Papers of John C. Underwood, Letters of Anna Eliot Ticknor. Louisiana State University Libraries, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections: David Weeks and Family Papers. Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, Massachusetts: Lucy Larcom Diaries, William Hickling Prescott Papers, Horace Mann Collection. New York Historical Society, New York. New York Public Library, New York: Berg Collection of English and American Literature, The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations. Rare Books Department, Humanities and Social Sciences Library (42nd Street), and Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Beecher-Stowe Family Papers. Sophia Smith Collection, Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts: Fanny Fern and Ethel Parton Papers, Authors Collection, Hale Family Papers, Autograph Collection. University of Virginia Library, Charlottesville, Virginia: Special Collections: Papers of the Mathews Family; Clifton Waller Barrett Library of American Literature, Special Collections: Papers of Harriet Beecher Stowe, Papers of Richard B. Kimball.

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Gilmore, William J., Reading becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England, 1780–1835 (Knoxville, University of Tennessee Press, 1989). Gohdes, Clarence, American Literature in Nineteenth-Century England (New York, Columbia University Press, 1944). Gossett, Thomas F., Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture (Dallas, Southern Methodist University Press, 1985). Graham, George, “Black Letters; or Uncle Tom-Foolery in Literature,” Graham’s Magazine (Philadelphia), February 1853: 209–15. , “Editor’s Table,” Graham’s Magazine, March 1853: 365–6. Greenfield, Meg, “Uncle Tom’s Roots,” Newsweek, 14 February 1977: 100. Greenspan, Ezra, George Palmer Putnam, Representative American Publisher (University Park, PA, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). , “Addressing or Redressing the Magazine Audience: Edmund Quincy’s Wensley,” in Kenneth M. Price and Susan Belasco Smith (eds), Periodical Literature in Nineteenth-Century America (Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia, 1995), pp. 133–49. Gross, Seymour L. and John Edward Hardy (eds), Images of the Negro in American Literature (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1966). Groves, Jeffrey D., “Judging Literary Books by Their Covers: House Styles, Ticknor and Fields, and Literary Promotion,” in Michele Moylan and Lane Stiles (eds), Reading Books: Essays on the Material Text and Literature in America (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1996), pp. 75–100. Gutjahr, Paul C., “Pictures of Slavery in the United States: Consumerism, Illustration, and the Visualization of Stowe’s Novel,” in Elizabeth Ammons and Susan Belasco (eds), Approaches to Teaching Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (New York, The Modern Language Association of America, 2000), pp. 77–92. Gysin, Brion, To Master—A Long Goodnight: The Story of Uncle Tom, A Historical Narrative (New York, Creative Age Press, 1946). Hackenberg, Michael (ed.), Getting the Books Out: Papers of the Chicago Conference on the Book in Nineteenth-Century America (Washington, The Center for the Book, Library of Congress, 1987). Hackett, Alice Payne, 70 Years of Best Sellers 1895–1965 (New York, R.R. Bowker, 1967). Haley, Alex, “In ‘Uncle Tom’ Are Our Guilt and Hope,” The New York Times Magazine, 1 March 1964: 23 and 90. Hall, David D., Cultures of Print: Essays in the History of the Book (Amherst, University of Massachusetts Press, 1996). , “A Yankee Tutor in the Old South,” The New England Quarterly 33/1 (March 1960): 82–91. , and John B. Hench (eds), Needs and Opportunities in the History of the Book: America, 1639–1876 (Worcester, MA, American Antiquarian Society, 1987). Hamilton, Sinclair, Early American Book Illustrators and Wood Engravers, 1670–1870 (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1958).

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Zboray, Ronald J. and Zboray, Mary Saracino, “Books, Reading, and the World of Goods in Antebellum New England,” American Quarterly 8/4 (December 1996): 587–622. , and Zboray, Mary Saracino, “Reading and Everyday Life in Antebellum Boston: The Diary of Daniel F. and Mary D. Child,” Libraries and Culture 32/3 (Summer 1997): 285–323.


Index

Acclaim Books 180n10 adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin (UTC) in art 2n5 cartoons 181, 181n14 comics 179–80 dance 1–2 influence of on illustrations of UTC Eliza 168,171–2, 193 Tom 83, 84, 167, 168n42, 170, 171, 177n1, 185, 190 on reception of UTC 83, 84, 151, 160, 167, 168, 179, 190, 196, 205 movies 2, 84, 168, 171, 183 musical 181n14 theater, Tom shows 1–2, 64 copyright of 106 southern opposition to 119, 182–3 success and decline of 89, 151, 167–8, 177 African Americans as characters in UTC, see Eliza, Topsy, Uncle Tom edition of UTC aimed at 119 and reactions to UTC 182, 200 after Reconstruction 124, 158 representations of in press and media 150–52, 158, 174–5 as writers of prefaces to UTC 179, 195 Agnes of Sorrento (Stowe) 114, 115, 117, 121, 146 Airmont Classics 184n27 A.L. Burt 162, 163, 165, 177n1 Alcott, Louisa May 11 Alger, Horatio 167 Alice in Wonderland 166n36 Allen, James Lane 150, 152 Allen, Thomas B. 193 Allison, W.L. see W.L. Allison Alpha Library (Rand McNally) 161 Altemus, Henry see Henry Altemus

American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 16, 94 , 103 and National Era 17 discusses possibility of cheap edition of UTC 77 instrumental in circulating UTC 49, 94 American Anti-Slavery Society 34n6 American canon and 19th-century women writers 180 and African American writers 194 questioned 187,188 194, 197 and UTC 180, 183, 192, 196, 197–8, 203, 205 American Masterpiece Library 192 American News Company 162, 163, 165 American Publishers’ Circular and Literary Gazette 59–60, 99, 109–111 passim American Publishers’ Corporation 168 Ammons, Elizabeth 196, 197 Andrews, Hannah Page Wheeler 84n54 Andrews, William L. 34n6 Angoff, Charles 179, 186 Annotated UTC 185n30, 191 Appleton 154, 168n42 Argo, Norman 148 Arm Chair Library (Lupton) 161, 162, 163, 165 Arthur, Timothy Shay 12 Ten Nights in a Bar-Room 166 Atlantic Monthly 113,114, 121, 128n58, 154 comments on 1879 edition 124, 127–8 Aunt Jemima 174, 175 Aunt Phyllis’s Cabin 97, 103 author–publisher contracts, 19th century half-profits 39–41 royalties 39–41, 44n62 sale of manuscript 39–40 Avery, Tex 181n14 Bacon, Delia 45 Bacon, Francis, Essays 166n36

258


Bailey, Gamaliel 15–31 passim, 37, 38n27, 54, 75, 106n80; see also National Era and contributors 19, 21 Southworth 18, 19, 21 Stowe 15–16, 19, 20–24, 28–30 and fiction in Era 18, 21 as intermediary between Stowe, readers, publishers 25–7, 77 Baker (engraver) 71–2n19, 81n45 mentioned in Jewett’s ads 48, 49 Bakhtin, Mikhail 205 Baldwin, James 2, 182, 188, 199 Ballou, Ellen 40 Baltimore Saturday Visitor 18 Balzac, Honoré de 162 Illusions perdues 60n40 La Peau de chagrin 52n13 Bantam Classics 192, 194 Barnes, James T. 36n15 Barnes & Noble 193n56, 194, 197, 200 Barrie, J.M. 162 Baym, Nina 12n26, 31n108, 197 Beecher, Catharine (sister) 7–8, 22, 23, 33–45 passim, 105 The True Remedy for the Wrongs of Women 33 Truth Stranger than Fiction 45 Beecher, Charles (brother) 33 Beecher, Edward (brother) 15n38 Beecher, Henry Ward (brother) 13, 15, 15n38, 27n92, 75, 121 Lectures to Young Men 35, 109 Beecher, James (brother) 105 Beecher, Lyman (father) 7, 35, 45, 51, 75 Belasco Smith, Susan 24n78 Belknap, Jeremy, The Foresters 17 Bell, Bill 28–9n98 Belloc, Louise Swanton 65n62, 122 Bentley, Richard 106, 107 Betty’s Bright Idea (Stowe) 135 Bigsby, Christopher 198, 200 Billings, Hammat 71–2n19, 72, 84n56, 129, 167 illustrations for 1st edition UTC, 71–2n19, 72–73, 134, 192, 193 illustrations for 1853 edition UTC 81–4, 86, 129 mentioned in Jewett’s ads 48, 49, 78 Birdoff, Harry 83, 168n3

Birney, James 13, 17 Blanck, Jacob 70n15, 73–4n24 Blassingame, John 189 Blight, David 150 Bloom, Harold 198, 198n68 Bonn, Thomas L. 185n28 Bookman 67n2 books democratization of, 19th century 69n9, 161 distribution of, 19th century 67, 91–4, 153, 164, 166, 196 technological improvements in industry of, 19th century 67–69, 160, 166, 196 Books, Inc. 161 Bosworth, Thomas see Thomas Bosworth Bourdieu, Pierre 4, 192 Bourget, Paul 161 Bowden, James see James Bowden Boynton and Marshall 71n16 Brake, Laurel 24 and Bill Bell, David Finkelstein 17 Brawley, Benjamin 182n17 Bremer, Frederika 10 Briggs, Caroline A. 208n6 Briggs, Charles 22, 67–8, 99 Brodhead, Richard H. 59n33 Brontë (Anne, Charlotte, Emily) 161, 162 Brooks, Van Wyck 186 Brown, Charles E. see Charles E. Brown Brownlow, Parson William G. 120 Buck, Eliza 146 Bullen, Frank, The Cruise of the Cachalot 179n8 Bullen, George 124–8 passim, 155 Bulwer-Lytton, E.G. 48n3 Burt, A.L. see A.L. Burt Byron, Lady, Lord 121, 126 Cable, George Washington 137 Caine, Hall 162 Caldwell, H.M. see H.M. Caldwell Cambridge Classics (Hurst) 163 Carey, Matthew 93n15 Carlisle, 7th Earl of (George Howard) 64, 96 Cary, Alice (Patty Lee) 207n2, 208n4 Cary, Phoebe 207n5,n6 Cassell & Co. 131, 154, 155n5 Cassell, John see John Cassell

Index Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger) 189 Celluloid Series (Merrill & Baker) 166 Century Magazine 150–52 passim Certeau, Michel de 3 Charles E. Brown 144n104 Charlotte Temple (Susanna Rowson) 2, 5, 69n9 Charpentier 65 Chartier, Roger 4, 60n40 Charvat, William 27, 31n110, 41n42, 60 Chesnutt, Charles, The Marrow of Tradition 158 Child, Lydia Maria 11, 16 Chimney Corner Series (Lupton) 161, 163, 167, 169 Christian Union 114n9, 121 Chronicle (Cincinnati) 8 Cincinnati Journal and Luminary 13 civil rights movement and UTC 185, 189–91 passim, 204 Clarke & Co., C.H. Clarke & Co., Clarke, Beeton & Co. 80n43, 84, 86n58, 106, 107, 108n91 Clarke, Lewis G., and J. Milton 148–9 Classic American Texts (Oxford UP) 184 Classics Illustrated (Gilberton) 179 Claybaugh, Amanda 197, 199 Cleage, Albert, Jr. 190n47 Colburn, Henry 60n40 Cole, Samuel W. The American Veterinarian 50, 109 Collier Books 185 Collins, Wilkie 162 Columbian Magazine 17 Cooke, Nathaniel see Nathaniel Cooke Cooper, James Fenimore 162, 179 The Spy 206 Copeland, Charles 164n30 Copyright (UTC) 20n63, 33, 118, 122, 123, 136, 139, 140, 207n1; see also international copyright agreement disputed, 1892 140–44 expiration of 144 Corley, D.B. 149 Corrigan, Robert 184n27, 187, 190 Covarrubias, Miguel 178 Crosby, William G. 110 Crowell, Thomas Y. see Thomas Y. Crowell Cruikshank, George 129, 165, 173n47, 192, 193

259

cultural studies 194, 198n68, 205 Cummins, Maria 44 The Lamplighter 44n62, 59, 99n49, 109, 110 Curtis, George William 100n55, 150 Daily Evening Traveller (Boston) 50, 53 Dana, Richard Henry Two Years before the Mast 39n36 Darnton, Robert 3 Daugherty, James 177 Davidson, Cathy N. 2–3, 5, 69n9 De Forest, John William 127 Dempsey, David 180 Derby & Jackson 114 Derby & Miller 40, 50–51, 93, 103 Derby, George H. see George H. Derby Derby, J.C. 27n92, 40, 45 Fifty Years among Authors, Books and Publishers 46 Derby, Orton & Mulligan 103n69 Dickens, Charles 61, 62, 64, 69, 122, 127, 161, 179, 180 Bleak House 50 The Old Curiosity Shop 62 Pickwick Papers 62, 206 Dodd, Mead & Co. 179 Dodge, Mary Abigail 45 Donohue Brothers 163 Donohue, Henneberry & Co. 163, 166 Donohue, M.A. see M.A. Donohue Douglas, Ann 7, 159, 196, 198, 199 Douglass, Frederick, 193, 194, 199, 200 “The Heroic Slave” 199, 205 Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass 34, 193, 200, 205 Doyle, Arthur Conan 162 Dred (Stowe) 30, 31, 34, 107n89, 113, 116, 192 Du Bois, W.E.B. 190 Black Reconstruction 183n24 The Souls of Black Folk 190 Dumanoir and d’Ennery 83 Dumas, Alexandre 162, 179 The Count of Monte Cristo 187 Dumond, Dwight L. 186 Dun, R.G. & Co. 36n16, 108, 110–11 Dunbar, Paul Laurence 179 Earthly Care (Stowe) 109, 110 Eastburn, John H. see John H. Eastburn

260


Eco, Umberto 187 Eliot, George 161, 162 Romola 166 Elite Series (Lupton) 163 Eliza 83, 84, 168, 188 in illustrations and Tom shows 72, 73, 82, 83, 85, 168, 171, 172 real-life models for 148, 149 Eliza on Ice (Terry Toon Cartoons) 181n14 Emerson, Ralph Waldo 114, 131n66, 134, 138, 162, 162n27 Essays 175 Emilio, Manuel 63 Ernest Linwood (Caroline Lee Hentz) 110 Eva 132, 148, 168 as poem and song, in illustrations 63, 78, 82, 132, 179 commented on, in 1960s introductions 188–9 Everyman 179n6, 193, 193n56, 198, 200 Everyman/Borzoi 194, 198 Exman, Eugene 33n3, 39n36, 40n41, 41n47, 100–101n55 Faulkner, Janette 174n51 Favorite Library (American News Company) 162, 165 Fay, Theodore Sedgwick 40n41 Federal Book Company 163, 166, 167, 171 Female Life among the Mormons (Maria Ward) 94n19 Fenno, R.F. see R.F. Fenno Fern, Fanny (Sara Willis Parton) 7, 39, 106n82 Fern Leaves 39–40, 93, 99n49, 103 Ruth Hall 7, 59n33, 99n49 Fiedler, Leslie 86n57, 182n19 Fields, Annie 25n81, 37, 114, 122, 178, 178n5 Fields, James T. 45, 60, 105n78, 146 and Stowe 114–22 passim retires 122, 124n49; see also Ticknor, Reed & Fields, Ticknor & Fields, Fields, Osgood & Co., Fields, Osgood & Co. 117–18 Fine Editions Press 179 Fisher, Philip 72, 195n63 Flag of Our Union 56n27, 69n9, 88 F.M. Lupton 163–9 passim Follen, Eliza Cabot 106

Foner, Eric 189 Footsteps of the Master (Stowe) 135 Ford, J.B. & Co. 114n9 Fords, Howard & Hulbert 114n9, 135 Foster, Charles H. 183 Franklin, John Hope 189n44 Franklin Library 193 Frederick Douglass’ Paper 37, 56, 77, 95 “Freeman’s Dream: A Parable” (Stowe) 14 F. Tennyson Neely 161, 163, 166, 173 Fuentes, Carlos 4 Fugitive Slave Law 14 and inception of UTC 15–17, 204 Furnas, J.C., Goodbye to Uncle Tom’s Cabin 182, 184, 190 Gaboriau, Emile 162 Gaines, Francis Pendleton 154, 156, 157, 159, 167 Gardiner, Juliet 193 Garrison, William Lloyd 24, 56, 76n34, 124n48; see also Liberator Garvey, Ellen Gruber 175n52 Gatrell, Simon 114 Geary, Susan 28n94, 30n106, 41, 44, 59n33 Genette, Gérard 4, 160n23 George H. Derby 54, 58–9 George M. Smith & Co. 131 George Routledge & Co. 64n59, 131 giftbooks 9, 12, 12n26 Gilbertson, Catherine 180 Gilder, Richard W. 150n126, 152 Girard Trust Company 181 Gleason, Frederick 69n9, 88; see also Flag of Our Union Godey’s Lady’s Book 12–13, 34 Gone with the Wind (Margaret Mitchell) 183, 196 Gosselin, Charles 52n13 Gossett, Thomas F. 64n56, 83, 84n54, 168n41, 182n17 Graham, George, Graham’s Magazine 30–31, 59, 103 Grammar of the English Language (W.H. Wells) 109 Grant, Ulysses S., Memoirs 151 Great Illustrated Classics (Dodd, Mead) 179 Greeley, Philip 41, 105n79 Greenspan, Ezra 22n70, 52n15, 70n13 Greenwood, Grace 16, 24, 25, 34

Index Grosset & Dunlap 163, 164, 167, 168, 171 Gutjahr, Paul 82n48, 178n3 G. Vickers 173n47 Gysin, Brion, To Master-A Long Goodbye 182 Hale, Edward Everett 45 Hale, Sarah Josepha 13 Haley, Alex 190 Roots 190 half-profits 39–42, 107, 116–17, 145 Hall, Judge James 8 Hamilton, Sinclair 71–2n19 Handy Volume Classics (Donohue & Henneberry) 166 Harned, William 49, 56, 94 Harper & Brothers 33, 51, 52 and contracts with authors 39n36, 40, 40n41, 41 publish Mayflower 12, 109 Harper’s Magazine 198 Harper’s Monthly 33n3 and UTC 100, 100–101n55, 102 Harper’s Weekly 150 Harris, Joel Chandler 137, 151 Harry Potter (J.K. Rowling) 48, 63n54 Hart, James D. 69n9 Harte, Bret 162n27 Hartford Publishing Company 114n9, 119n32 Harvard University Press 185n29 Hawthorne, Nathaniel 8, 12n26, 113–14, 134, 138, 140n93, 144n104, 162n27, 187, 188 Life of Franklin Pierce 39n36 The Scarlet Letter 175, 187 advertised 51 editions of 113n2, 131, 132n71, 134, 136n84, 144n104, 161, 166n36, stereotyped 67n3 Hearth and Home 7–9 passim, 120 Hearthstone edition (Home Book Cy) 167 Hedrick, Joan 13n31, 15n38, 23n74, 31, 104n75, 126, 192, 198, 199 Helper, Hinton R. 34 Helps, Arthur 95 Hemingway, Ernest 198 Henry Altemus 153, 154 Henson, Josiah 40n39, 109, 148, 148n119, 149, 182

261

Hentz, Caroline Lee 8, 11, 12, 109 Ernest Linwood 110 The Planter’s Northern Bride 8 Higginson, Thomas Wentworth 153–9 passim Hildreth, Richard 34, 35, 86n58 H.M. Caldwell 163, 166 Hobart & Robbins 68n5 Hochman, Barbara 3n10, 24n78, 138n88 Holbrook, Charles William 97 Holmes, Oliver Wendell 162n77 The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table 175 Home Book Company 163, 167 Home Library (Burt) 162, 165 Homestead, Melissa J. 9n8, 39, 92n7, 106n81 Hooker, Isabella Beecher (half-sister) 42, 43, 60, 63, 104 Houghton, Henry Oscar 122, 134, 138; see also Houghton, Osgood & Co. and Houghton, Mifflin Houghton, Mifflin & Co. 40, 115, 117, 131–47 passim, 150, 153–5 passim, 160, 161, 162, 162n27, 175, 184, 194 Houghton, Osgood & Co. 117, 122, 123, 125, 129, 131, 136, 150 Houghton, Thomas C. 132 Howells, William Dean 124n49 Huggins, Nathan 189 Hugo, Victor, Les Misérables 120, 198 Hughes, Langston 179, 180, 182, 183, 195 Hurd & Houghton 117, 122 Hurst & Co. 161–8 passim, 172 illustrations of UTC affected by adaptations 167–8, 171, 172, 193, 205 in Jewett’s editions see Billings in 1879 edition 128–31, 137, 144, 181, 193 in 1892 edition see Kemble in editions of 1920s, 30s and 40s 168, 171, 177, 178, 179 in editions of 1960s 185, 185n28, 192 in editions since 1970 193, 200 in other Houghton, Mifflin editions: 132, 134, 139–41 in “libraries” 164, 165, 166, 167–72 in “memorial editions” 155, 168n42

262


suggested by Era reader 27n91 “Immediate Emancipation: A Sketch” (Stowe) 14, 24 Independent 15n38, 63, 97 Jewett’s ads in 50, 54, 61–2, 78 reports on UTC 56, 61–2, 75, 91, 92 international copyright agreement (lack of) and UTC 106–8 International Publishing Company 131 Introductions to UTC see prefaces Irving, Washington 69, 70n13, 175, 179 The Alhambra 166 The Sketch-Book 175 Jackson, Helen Hunt, Ramona 159 James Bowden 164n30 James, G.P.R. 48n3 James, Henry UTC, opinion of 160, 187 Portrait of a Lady 126n53 James R. Osgood & Co. 117–18, 122, 129 Jauss, Hans Joseph 196 J.E. Potter 154 J.H. Sears & Co. 166 Jewett, Henry P. B. (half-brother) 36, 104; see also Jewett, Proctor & Worthington Jewett, Proctor & Worthington (Cleveland) 80, 91, 92, 101 failure 110–11 gains from UTC 108 launching of, announced and advertised 36, 47, 48, 51 Jewett, John P. see John P. Jewett & Co Johanningsmeier, Charles 53n18 John C. Winston 154 John Cassell 165, 173n47, 192 John H. Eastburn 34n7 John Hogg & Co. 131 John P. Jewett & Co. 38n24, 41n47, 91, 101, 109, 116, 132, 135, 161, 196 abandons publishing 110 advertises and promotes UTC 47–64 and anti-slavery literature 35, 103 and Beecher-Stowe Family 35 as Beecher-Stowe family banker 105 and contract for UTC 28, 37–42 early career of 35 first contacts with Stowe 36–7

his gains from UTC, other bestsellers 108–9 is left with large stocks of UTC 101–2 produces 3 editions of UTC 67–89 quarrels with Stowe 42–6 sells plates of UTC 115 has UTC stereotyped 28, 37, 67–8, 70 worries about length of UTC 27–8 Johnson, Charles 195, 200, 201 Jones, Bill T., Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin 1–2 Jones, Howard Mumford 187–91 passim, 198 Jorgenson, Chester E. 183 Joseph Leonard & Co. 110n103, 115 J.S. Ogilvie 165, 173 J. Walter Thompson 181 Kay, Floraine 2n4 Kazin, Alfred 195–9 passim Kelley, Mary 7n2, 44 Kemble, Edward Windsor 137–9, 144, 146, 152 Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe) 45, 58, 74, 86, 87, 103, 192 as authenticating document for UTC 103n69, 148, 157, 204 contract for 43, 116 promotion, sales of 59, 102n62, 105, 109 Kilgour, Raymond L. 35n14 King, Martin Luther, Jr. 191, 205 Kingsley & Co. 91–2 Kingsley, Charles 64 Kirk, Rev. E.N. 45 Kirkham, E. Bruce 20n63, 28, 38, 68n5, 73–4n24, 83n50 Kossuth, Louis 208n10, 209n14 Lamplighter, The see Cummins, Maria Larcom, Lucy 110 Larner, Jeremy 187, 190 Last Supper at Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Bill T. Jones) 1–2 Law, Graham 22n68 Lee, William see Phillips, Sampson & Co. Legree (Simon Legree) 2, 168 Leonard, Joseph & Co. see Joseph Leonard & Co. Leonowens, Anna 122

Index Levine, Lawrence W. 189, 195n59 Lewis, Gladys Sherman 195–6n63 Liberator 24, 56, 62, 72, 76 comments on Jewett’s editions 81, 86, 87 Librairie Nouvelle 65–6 “Libraries” 153, 160–72 dating editions in 160 illustrations in 167–72 marketing strategies of 161, 164–7 recycling of editions in 163–4 transatlantic circulation of 164 works published in 160–62, 166 Library of America 192 Literary Classics of the United States 192, 194 Vintage 194, 196 Life at the South (W.L.G. Smith) 58–9, 101, 102, 103 Life of Barnum 99n49 Light, Geo. W. 49, 94 limited editions 138 of UTC 137, 138, 154, 162n27, 178, 193 Limited Editions Club 178 Lincoln, Abraham 156 apocryphal address to Stowe 178, 178n5, 186, 194, 204 Lind, Jenny 208n6 Literacy, expansion of in the 19th century 68 Literary World 51, 52, 54, 59, 78 Little, Brown & Co. 35, 72 Littlest Rebel, The (dir. David Butler) 183 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth 69, 138, 140n93 Evangeline 128 Hiawatha 99n49, 114 Poems 175 Lorini, Alessandra 150 Lovejoy, Elijah 15n38 Low, Sampson see Sampson Low, Son & Co. Lowe, Samuel A. 88 Lowell, James Russell 136n84 Poems 175 Lund, Michael 17, 29n100 Lupton, F.M. see F.M. Lupton Lynn, Kenneth 187–91 passim, 197, 198, 199 M.A. Donohue 163

263

Mackey, William, Jr. 195, 196, 197, 200 Macmillan 154 Macquoid, Thomas Robert 129–31, 137, 193 Madame Bovary (G. Flaubert) 187 Manhattan 36–47 passim, 99, 104 Martin, Francis Jr. 146n112 Martin, Henri-Jean 60n40 McGill, Meredith L. 9n8, 49n4 McIntosh, Maria 11, 44, 109 McKenzie, D.F. 4, 150 McPherson, James M. 196–199 passim Mann, Horace 95 Marston, Edward 80n43 Martha Washington’s Cookbook 161 Marvel, Ik see Mitchell, Donald G. Mason Brothers 59n33 Mathews, Harriet 97 Matthiessen, F.O., American Renaissance 180 Mayflower, The (Stowe) 12, 13, 33, 109, 116 Melville, Herman 40n41, 187, 198 Moby-Dick 178, 179n8, 187, 188 White-Jacket 51, 52 Men of Our Times (Stowe) 114n9, 119n32, 120 Merrill & Baker 166 Mifflin, George Harrison 122; see also Houghton, Osgood & Co., Houghton, Mifflin & Co. Minister’s Wooing, The (Stowe) 114–16 passim, 121, 162, 192 Mitchell, Donald G. 7, 100n55, 161 Modern Library 1948 edition 178, 179n6, 180 2001 edition 192, 198 Moers, Ellen 34–5n9, 197 Monroe, Harriet 159n19 Moore, Mary C. 97 Morris, Charles 154, 156, 157, 159 Moses, Wilson Jeremiah 191n52 Motley, John Lothrop, Dutch Republic 175 My Wife and I (Stowe) 114n9, 126, 135 Nathaniel Cooke 128–9, 131 Nation 126 National Advertiser 140, 141–4 passim National Anti-Slavery Standard 56 National Era 14–31 passim, 37, 38, 147, 207–9; see also Bailey

264


ads for UTC in 48–50 contents of 17, 207n2, 208nn4, 5, 6, 10, 209n14 fiction in, before UTC 18–19, 21 readers’ letters about UTC in 24–8, 77 multiple readership of 29 as organ of the American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society 17 read by John P. Jewett’s wife 36, 37 Stowe’s farewell to readers of 26, 28 supports and circulates UTC after publication 29, 54, 75, 94 UTC serialized in 20–24, 207–9 Neely, F. Tennyson see F. Tennyson Neely New Argyle Series of Popular Authors (Hurst) 161, 163, 165 New York Evangelist 8, 14, 108 New York Herald 100–101 New York Times 1, 75, 95, 104 Northup, Solomon, Twelve Years a Slave 103 Norton Critical Edition 191, 193 Norton’s Literary Advertiser 50 Norton’s Literary Gazette 37, 47, 50–61 passim, 78–84 passim, 87, 91–109 passim ads for and sales figures of UTC in 48–61 passim, 79, 99, 104n74 reports on possible pirated edition 92 review of UTC in 30, 83 Nye, Russell 186, 187 Nyssen Hubert 205 Nystrom–Stoopendaal, Jenny 131, 155n5, 168n42 Observer (New York) 75, 76 Ogilvie, J.S., 142; see also J.S. Ogilvie O’Gorman, James F. 72nn20, 21, 82–3n49, 84n54 Okker, Patricia 17, 22–3n71, 24n78 Oldtown Folks (Stowe) 31, 119 Olive Branch 50, 53 Olmsted, Frederick Law 96 100 Greatest Masterpieces of American Literature 193 Ophelia 157 Osgood, James Ripley 122, 131; see also James R. Osgood & Co. Oxford University Press 184, 193n56 Classic American Texts 184

Oxford World Classics 194, 199–200 Oxford Harriet Beecher Stowe Reader 198 Page, Thomas Nelson 137, 151 Palmetto Leaves (Stowe) 121 Panizzi, Anthony 127 paratext 4, 5, 160n23 contradictions allographic/editorial paratexts of UTC 178–80, 191–2, 198–9, 203 polyphonic quality of 205 prefaces to UTC see prefaces reflecting changes in academia 194–5 respect of authorial paratext in editions of UTC 164, 192, 193n56 Parker, Rev. Joel, Parker footnote: 74–6, 164 Parsons, C.G. (Charles Grandison) 98, 109 Parton, James 39, 106, 108 Parton, Sara Willis see Fern, Fanny Pattee, Fred Lewis 12n26, 34, 183 Paul and Virginia (B. de Saint-Pierre) 61, 62 Pearl of Orr’s Island, The (Stowe) 121, 192 Penguin Classics 194, 198 Penny Offering 107–8 periodicals (19th century) circulation of articles and stories in 8, 9 growth of 12, 68 multiple readership of 29n100 and the rise of serialization 18 writers for 12 Perkins, Mary Beecher (sister) 45 Philanthropist 13, 17, 18 Phillips, Moses D. see Phillips, Sampson & Co. Phillips, Sampson & Co. 35, 51, 72, 101, 102 American Negro Slavery 158 become Stowe’s publishers 101, 113 fail 114 Phillips, Ulrich B. 189 Pictures and Stories from UTC 108 turn down UTC 33–4 Pinckney, Darryl 195, 199 Pink and White Tyranny (Stowe) 114n9, 126 plantation novel 151, 152, 158, 188, 189n45, 199 Poe, Edgar Allan 12, 12n26

Index Poganuc People (Stowe) 114n9, 126 Popular Library (Neely) 161, 163, 173 Potter, J.E. see J.E. Potter Pratt, William M. 166 prefaces, introductions, afterwords; see also paratext allographic prefaces to UTC 203–6 1893–1930 153–160 1930–1960 178–180 1960s 185–192 since 1970 195–201; see also under name of preface writer Stowe, prefaces to UTC 203–6 1852, Jewett 65, 66, 128, 137, 138, 140, 166, 184 1852, Bosworth 65, 66, 107, 184 1852, Tauchnitz 65, 66, 184 1853, Charpentier 65, 66, 184 1853, Librairie Nouvelle 65, 184 1879 Houghton, Osgood 27n92, 37, 64n59, 66, 122–4, 128, 137, 147, 148, 150, 155, 156, 184 Stowe, prefaces to works by Henson, Parsons 109, 148n119 Primary Geography (Stowe) 8 Prince Albert 64 Proctor, John D. (“Deacon” Proctor) 36, 45, 110 his son 111 Provincial Freeman (Toronto) 96 publishers and anti-slavery works 33–35, 103, 195 and contracts with authors, 19th century 39–41 Publishers’ Circular (London) 84, 86, 108 Publisher’s Weekly (New York) 123–39 passim, 160, 164, 180 Putnam, G.P. 39n36, 51, 52, 56n27, 58, 69, 79n41 Putnam’s Monthly 22, 67, 99 Quincy, Edmund, Wensley 22 Railton, Stephen 16n43, 195–6n63 Rand & Avery 115 Rand McNally 161 Rand, Randolph Curtis 2n4 Rankin, Rev. 149 Reader’s Digest 131, 193 Reader’s Library (J.H. Sears) 16

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readers and Jewett’s editions of UTC 87–9 readers’ letters on UTC 3 in introduction to 1879 edition 64n59, 123–4 in National Era 24–8, 77 in Stowe’s correspondence 147–8 Reconstruction 124–5, 189, 204 Red Badge of Courage, The (Stephen Crane) 187 Reed, Ishmael, Flight to Canada 182 R.F. Fenno 163, 167 Riverside Press 117, 128 Robert Brothers 114n9 Rodgers and Hammerstein, The King and I 181n14 Routledge, George, & Co. see George Routledge & Co. Rowson, Susanna see Charlotte Temple royalties 39–41, 44n62 St. Clare 188 Sampson, Charles see Phillips, Sampson & Co. Sampson Low, Son & Co. 80, 84, 86, 107, 108, 116 Sand, George 2, 127 Sargent, Lucius M., Temperance Tales 53 Satterfield, Jay 179n6 Schiffrin, André 102 Schreyer, Alice 39n35 Scott, Alison M. 18n53, 19 Scott, Walter 127, 179 Sears, J.H. see J.H. Sears & Co. Sedgwick, Catherine 11, 40n41 Semi-Colon Club (Cincinnati) 8 serialization (fiction) beginnings of in England, France, US 17–18 as a constraint for editors 19, 22 as a constraint for writers 19, 21–2 and publication in book form 23–4 and questions of copyright 144 as testing ground for fiction 28 “Series” see “Libraries” Shady Side, The (Martha Stone Hubbell) 109 Shakespeare, William 127, 180 Shelley, Percy Bysshe 162n27 Sheppard, William Ludwell 151 Shick, Frank L. 164n31

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Shoup, Francis A. 156–7 Signet Classics 194, 198 Sigourney, Lydia 12 Simmons, J. 132 Simms, William Gilmore 12, 39n36, 40n41 Sinclair, Upton, The Jungle 159 Sir John Franklin 54 Skinner, Otis 177n1 slave narratives 2, 34, 40n39, 103, 199, 200, 205; see also under Uncle Tom’s Cabin slavery as a topic for 19th-century writers 16, 188 debate on representation of, in UTC 152, 157, 186, 189, 200, 204–5 rewritings of 150–2, 158, 189, 196 Smiley, Jane 195, 198, 199 Smith, George M. & Co. see George M. Smith & Co. Smith, Susan Belasco 24n78 Southern Literary Messenger 95 Southworth, E.D.E.N. 11, 18, 21, 162 The Mother-In-Law 18–20 passim Retribution 18, 20, 21, 33n3 Special Theater Edition (Ogilvie) 165, 173 Spofford, A.R. 142–3 Stampp, Kenneth 126n51 Stanley, Amy Dru 39n32 Stephens, Ann Sophia 12 Stern, Philip van Doren 185, 187, 189–91 passim Stevenson, Robert Louis 161 Stowe, Calvin Ellis (husband) 8, 15, 102, 105, 116, 118, 119, 135 and his wife’s career 9–11 negotiates UTC contract with Jewett 38–43 and Parker footnote 74–6 passim Stowe, Charles Edward (son) 122–3, 139, 145–6 Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe 37, 38, 147 Stowe, Harriet Beecher accused of racism in UTC 182–3, 190, 199, 203, 205 Agnes of Sorrento 114, 115, 117, 121, 146 and Atlantic Monthly 113, 114, 121 Betty’s Bright Idea 135

and book contract for UTC 38–9 changes publishers 101 Dred 30, 31, 34, 107n89, 113, 116, 192 early career of 7–13 Mayflower, The 12, 13, 33, 109, 116 Primary Geography 8 Earthly Care 105, 109,110 first anti-slavery writings 13–14 reasons for writing UTC 15–17, 20 changes the subtitle of UTC 21, 66 dedicates copies of UTC for Union soldiers 118n27 takes out copyright for UTC 20n63, 33, 142, 207n1 writes UTC for National Era 21–31 misses deadlines for installments 21–2, 26, 207–9 and division of chapters in Era 22–4 encouraged by readers/editor of Era 24–8 farewell to Era readers 26, 28 gains from UTC in Era 15–16, 19, 30 Footsteps of the Master 135 gives/sends copies of UTC 64, 88, 105–6, 146 gains from Jewett’s editions of UTC 104–6 gains from British editions of UTC 106–8 and Houghton, Mifflin 145–6 and James R. Osgood, 122 and James T. Fields, Ticknor & Fields 114–20 passim Key see Key literary assessment of, late 1870s 126–8 Men of Our Times 114n9, 119n32, 120 Minister’s Wooing, The 114, 115, 116, 162, 192 My Wife and I 114n9, 126, 135 and 19th–century social conventions 9, 13, 16–17, 38, 43, 199 Oldtown Folks 31, 119 Palmetto Leaves 121 participates in promotion of UTC 64–6; see also prefaces Pearl of Orr’s Island, The 121, 192 and Phillips, Sampson 113–14 Pink and White Tyranny 114n9, 126 Poganuc People 114n9, 126

Index public readings by 1872–1873 121 and other publishers 114n9 quarrels with Jewett 42–6 receives money from Tauchnitz for his edition of UTC 108n90 revises UTC 38, 73–4 Stowe and UTC 113, 115, 118–20, 145–50 correspondence with readers on 147–8 involvement in and reaction to illustrations of 72, 84, 86, 119, 129, 146 involvement in 1879 edition of 122–3 contracts for, and royalties from 1863–1877 116–7, 120–21 1878–1891 134–6 1892–1897 145 reaction to new editions of146 and source for characters in 148–50 Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands 84, 101 “The True Story of Lady Byron’s Life” 121 We and Our Neighbors 135 writing for giftbooks and periodicals 8–9 writing for money 9–13 passim, 120 Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe 154, 155 Stowe, Hatty (daughter) 123 Stringer & Townsend 51 Styron, William, The Confessions of Nat Turner 200 subscription books 119n32, 153, 154, 155n5 Sue, Eugène, 48n3 The Mysteries of Paris 28n96, 62n46 Sumner, Charles, White Slavery 105n78 Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Stowe) 84, 101 Sunny Side, The (E. Stuart Phelps) 35, 109 Sutton, Walter 48n3, 52 Tanselle, G. Thomas 118n28 Tauchnitz & Co. 65, 66, 108, n90 Tebbel, John 69n10, 163n28 Thin Paper Classics (Crowell) 161 Thomas, Amy M. 18n53, 19 Thomas Bosworth 65, 106–7

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Thomas, George 129–31, 137, 144, 193 Thomas Y. Crowell 161, 164n30, 165 Thompson, J. Walter see J. Walter Thompson Thompson & Co. 91, 92 Thompson, John R. 95 Thoreau, Henry David 187 Ticknor & Fields 36n15, 39n36, 40, 41, 70n12, 92, 100, 113–21 passim; see also Fields, James T. Ticknor, Reed & Fields 35–6, 36n15, 51, 58n31,60, 61, 67n3, 72; see also Fields, James T. Ticknor, William D. 116, 117; see also Ticknor, Reed & Fields, Ticknor & Fields Tinker, Edward Laroque 178 Tolstoy, Leo 179 Tompkins, Jane 197 Tom shows, see adaptations of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Topsy 168, 174–5 trade sales 92–3 Tribune (New York) 75 Trübner, Nicholas 129 “The True Story of Lady Byron’s Life” (Stowe) 121 Tryon, Warren S. 58n31, 114n10, 128n60 Twain, Mark (Samuel Langhorne Clemens) 180 Adventures of Huckleberry Finn 137–8, 187, 193, 198 “Two Altars: or, Two Pictures in One” (Stowe) 14, 108 Uncle Remus 174 Uncle Robin in His Cabin in Virginia (John W. Page) 103 Uncle Tom 1, 89, 186 in adaptations 83, 84, 171, 181 discussed in introductions 188, 189–91, 199, 205 in illustrations by Billings 72, 73, 81, 82, 83, 84 by Thomas and Macquoid 125, 129, 130 by Kemble 138, 139, 152 in “libraries” 167–71, 181 in other editions 132, 168n42, 193

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as a stereotype 83, 84, 168, 174–5, 181, 182, 185, 190, 199, 205 used in advertising174–5, 181 Uncle Tom and Little Eva (Jungle Jinks cartoons) 181n14 Uncle Tom’s Bungalow (Tex Avery) 181n14 Uncle Tom’s Cabana (Tex Avery) 181n14 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (Stowe); see also adaptations, illustrations, prefaces, Stowe, Harriet Beecher and advertising 173–5, 181, 183 answers to 8, 58, 64, 97, 101, 103, 151, 158 and civil rights movement 185, 189–91, 204 as a collective entreprise 24–31 e ffects of serialization on length of 25, 27, 28, 30 National Era 29–30 plot and style of 30–31 success of, in book format 28–9 copyrighted in National Era 20n63, 33, 142–4, 207n1 historical importance of 156–7, 168, 178–80 passim, 185, 186, 194, 195, 204 inception of 15–17 revised by Stowe 38, 73, 83 serialized in National Era 17–31, 207–9; see also National Era subtitle of 21, 66 title of 72 in book format published by John P. Jewett 27–8, 27n91, chapters 2–5 contract for 28, 37–42, 116 date of publication of 1, 37–8 decline in sales (Jewett’s editions) 100–104 different editions of, 67–87 distribution of 91–8 illustrations of, see Billings motion of, by Jewett 47–64 multiple readership of copies of 56, 87n61, 102 profits from, for Jewett 108 profits from, for Stowe 104–6 promotion of, by Stowe 64–6 sales figures of (Jewett’s editions) 99–100

success seen as a fad 100–102, 111 as a result of hype 59–60 in Britain 61–2, 106–8 brought out in “memorial” editions 153–60 byproducts of 62–4, 82n46 characters in see Eva, Legree, Ophelia, St. Clare, Uncle Tom critical assessment of 30–31, 126–8, 159–60, 177–89 passim, 192, 195–201 passim, 203–5; see also under American canon and controversy 1–2, 42, 48, 75, 123, 194, 196–7 200–201, 203 copyright of disputed, 1892 140–144 expires 144 renewed 122–3 decline of, 1930s–1950s 177, 183 and feminist scholarship 188, 194, 197, 199, 205 Houghton, Mifflin’s editions of, 131–46, 153–60 passim contracts for 135, 145, 145n108 sales figures of 136, 144–5 Jewett sells plates of 115 new edition of, 1879, Houghton, Osgood 122–31, 136 contract for 134–5 sales figures of 136 not reprinted by Derby, Jackson 114 not reprinted by Phillips, Sampson 114, 115 published in Writings of Harriet Beecher Stowe 153–5 passim and racism 84, 182–3, 189–91, 199–200, 203, 205 reissued in “Libraries” and “series” 153, 160–72 renaissance of, 1960s and later184–5 reprinted by Ticknor & Fields and successors 115–8 contract for 115–17 sales figures of, 1863–1878 120–21 and slave narratives 2, 103, 148–9, 182, 193, 199–200, in the South 94–8, 119–20, 183 unauthorized editions of 92, 92n7 yet still read 184

Index Uncle Tom’s Cabin (dir. Harry Pollard, Universal Pictures) 168 Uncle Tom’s Cabin (F. Kay and R.C. Rand) 2 Uncle Tom’s Cabin As It Is see Life at the South Underground Railroad 96 “Undine” (F. de la Motte Fouqué) 62, 63n48 US Book Company 142 Verne, Jules 162 Vickers, G. see G. Vickers Wagenknecht, Edward 177, 184 Wallace, Lew 179 Ben Hur 175, 187 Walsh, W.S. 153, 156, 159 Ward, John William 186, 187, 188n42, 190, 191 Warner, Anna and Susan 11 Warner, Anna, Dollars and Cents 58 Warner, Susan, The Wide, Wide World 39n36, 52, 58 Warner, Susan, Queechy 39n36, 58 Warner, Charles Dudley 37, 154–6 passim, 159 Warren, Joyce W. 40n37 Watts, Thomas 127 We and Our Neighbors (Stowe) 135 Weaver, Raymond 178, 188 Weeks, Edward 180 Weems, Mason Locke 93n15 Westbrook, Arthur 167, 170 Wetherell, Elizabeth see Warner, Susan Wheeler, A.S. 142 Whipple, S.K. 50 White, Anne Terry 185n31

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Whitman, Walt 187 Whittier, John Greenleaf 63, 162n27, 175, 209n14 Wild, Edward G. (General) 118n27 Wilson, Edmund 183, 192 Patriotic Gore 197 Wilson, Forrest 63, 68n4, 95 Winship, Michael 35, 36nn15–17, 38n28, 39n36, 67n3, 70n12, 91n2, 110, 113n2, 115n13, 132n71, 145n108 Winsor, Justin 127n56 Winston, John C. see John C. Winston 154 W.L. Allison 163 Women (19th century) rights of 38–9, 76, 115 and social conventions 7, 13, 16, 43, 44 Women (20th century) and the revaluation of UTC 197 as writers of prefaces to UTC 195 Wonder Bar (dir. Lloyd Bacon) 181 Wood, Marcus 73n23 Woods, John A. 186n33 World Columbian Exposition, Chicago 149, 173 World’s Popular Classics (Books, Inc.) 161 Wright, Richard 183 Uncle Tom’s Children 182 Native Son 182 X, Malcolm 191 Yellin, Jean Fagan 195, 197, 199 Young, Stark 180 Zboray, Ronald J. 3n8, 69n9, 69–70nn11, 13, 93n15 Zboray, Ronald J. and Mary S. 3n10

The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 18522002

Cliffsnotes Uncle Toms Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

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The Story of Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin

Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin

Cliffs notes on Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Author of Uncle Toms's Cabin

The Stowe debate: rhetorical strategies in Uncle Tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin, or Life among the lowly

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (Bloom's Guides)

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Young Folks' Edition (Volume 1)

The Mystery of Cabin Island

The Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 18522002

Cliffsnotes Uncle Toms Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

uncle tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin

The Story of Uncle Tom's Cabin

The Key To Uncle Tom's Cabin

Stowe, Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin

Cliffs notes on Stowe's Uncle Tom's cabin

Harriet Beecher Stowe: Author of Uncle Toms's Cabin

The Stowe debate: rhetorical strategies in Uncle Tom's cabin

Uncle Tom's cabin, or Life among the lowly

Uncle Tom's Cabin (Barnes & Noble Classics Series)

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (Bloom's Guides)

Uncle Tom's Cabin: Young Folks' Edition (Volume 1)

The Mystery of Cabin Island

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