Uncle Tom's Cabin is one of the most famous books in the world. It is so famous that people are capable of describing someone as an "Uncle Tom" or a "Simon Legnee," even of snickering at the death of"Little Eva," withoht altogether remembering that they have, in fact, never read Uncle Tom's Cabin.

They have never read it because they think they already know it. But the book itself was virtually out of print in the middle of the twentieth century until the 1960s and the renewed struggle over civil rights in the South: Uncle Tom's Cabin, the greatest fiction successof the nineteenth century,had become not only inaccessible but seemingly unnecessary...

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

  Introduction

  Preface

1. In Which the Reader is Introduced to a Man of Humanity

2. The Mother

3. The Husband and Father

4. An Evening in Uncle Tom"s Cabin

5. Showing the Feelings of Living Property on Changing Owners

6. Discovery

7. The Mother"s Struggle

8. Eliza"s Escape

9. In Which it Appears that a Senator is but a Man

10. The Property is Carried Off

11. In Which Property Gets into an Improper State of Mind

12. Select Incident of Lawful Trade

13. The Quaker Settlement

14. Evangeline

15. Of Tom"s New Master, and Various Other Matters

16. Tom"s Mistress and Her Opinious

17. The Freeman"s Defence

18. Miss Ophelia" s Experiences and Opinions

19. Miss Ophelia"s Experiences and Opinions, Continued

20. Topsy

21. Kentuck

22. "The Grass Withereth--the Flower Fadeth"

23. Henrique

24. Foreshadowings

25. The Little Evangelist

26. Death

27. "This Is the Last of Earth"

28. Reunion

29. The Unprotected

30. The Slave Warehouse

31. The Middle Passage

32. Dark Places

33. Cassy

34. The Quadroon"s Story

35. The Tokens

36. Emmeline ad Cassy

37. Liberty

38. The Victory

39. The Stratagem

40. The Martyr

41. The Young Master

42. An Authentic, Ghost Story

43. Results

44. The Liberator

45. Concluding Remarks

Bibliography