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.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, a prolific writer best remembered today for Uncle Tom’s Cabin, was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, on June 14, 1811, into a prominent New England family. First serialized in The National Era, an abolitionist paper, in 40 weekly installments between June 5, 1851, and April 1, 1852, and published as a book on March 20, 1852, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was an enormous success. Tolstoy deemed it a great work of literature “flowing from love of God and man,” and within a year the book had sold more than 300,000 copies. When Abraham Lincoln met her at the White House in 1862, he allegedly remarked: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that started this great war!” She died in Hartford, Connecticut, on July 1, 1896. Perhaps Mrs. Stowe’s achievement was best summed up by abolitionist Frederick Douglass who said: “Hers was the word for the hour.”