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Uncle Tom's Cabin (Barnes & Noble Classics Series) |  | Author: Harriet Beecher Stowe
Creator: Amanda Claybaugh
Publisher: Barnes & Noble Classics
Category: Book
List Price: $5.95
Buy New: $3.14
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Seller: mediathrill
Rating:  8 reviews
Sales Rank: 64097
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 576
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 6.7 x 4.1 x 1.4
ISBN: 1593080387
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9781593080389
ASIN: 1593080387
Publication Date: July 1, 2003
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
Uncle Tom's Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, is part of the Barnes & Noble Classics series, which offers quality editions at affordable prices to the student and the general reader, including new scholarship, thoughtful design, and pages of carefully crafted extras. Here are some of the remarkable features of Barnes & Noble Classics: New introductions commissioned from today's top writers and scholars Biographies of the authors Chronologies of contemporary historical, biographical, and cultural events Footnotes and endnotes Selective discussions of imitations, parodies, poems, books, plays, paintings, operas, statuary, and films inspired by the work Comments by other famous authors Study questions to challenge the reader's viewpoints and expectations Bibliographies for further reading Indices & Glossaries, when appropriateAll editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. Barnes & Noble Classics pulls together a constellation of influences—biographical, historical, and literary—to enrich each reader's understanding of these enduring works. Nearly every young author dreams of writing a book that will literally change the world. A few have succeeded, and Harriet Beecher Stowe is such a marvel. Although the American anti-slavery movement had existed at least as long as the nation itself, Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) galvanized public opinion as nothing had before. The book sold 10,000 copies in its first week and 300,000 in its first year. Its vivid dramatization of slavery’s cruelties so aroused readers that it is said Abraham Lincoln told Stowe her work had been a catalyst for the Civil War.
Today the novel is often labeled condescending, but its characters—Tom, Topsy, Little Eva, Eliza, and the evil Simon Legree—still have the power to move our hearts. Though “Uncle Tom” has become a synonym for a fawning black yes-man, Stowe’s Tom is actually American literature’s first black hero, a man who suffers for refusing to obey his white oppressors. Uncle Tom’s Cabin is a living, relevant story, passionate in its vivid depiction of the cruelest forms of injustice and inhumanity—and the courage it takes to fight against them.
Amanda Claybaugh is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
 History is not quite as tidy April 28, 2009
KW (Milwaukee, WI)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
Considering that Uncle Tom's Cabin was at one point banned (of course in Southern states) I was expected a gritty, horrifying glimpse into the lives of plantation slaves. Not so. Uncle Tom is the honest hard-working slaves of two kind 'owners', Mr. Shelby and Mr St.Clare. It is not until Tom is sold to Mr Legree that his life is filled with cruelty and ultimately death. The majority of the book, I feel, is an observation of how Christianity is a proponent or opponent of slavery depending on who is doing the interpretation. Although, Stowe's admits dramatizing (fictionalizing)the story lines off of 'real' events, I find it hard to believe the "happy ending". PBS had a great show called "Slavery and the Making of America", their website also gives a list on NON-fiction books on slavery. The truth is far more compelling than fiction.
 It's about time! March 31, 2009
Spirit (Roland, AR USA)
We've all heard references to "Uncle Tom's Cabin" throughout our lives, but I, for one, had never actually read it.
Figured it was about time, and glad I did.
A must read!
 A religious tract that changed the world January 14, 2009
C. Brown (Evanston, IL United States)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Uncle Tom's Cabin was written in 1850 when America was in the middle of a period of religious fervor with fire and brimstone preaching common. Among those leading this movement was Lyman Beecher, father of both Harriet Beecher Stowe and Henry Ward Beecher (see my review of his biography The Most Famous Man in America)
Transcendentalism was in flower, telling Americans that there was truth to be found in an emotional relationship to the nature and the senses. Sentimentality was at a peak. The Civil War years dripped with it as much as they did with blood.
Revivals were commonly held during which a Protestant Christian preacher would build up the emotional state of the crowd until it reached an almost orgasmic state. The kind of shallow effort at this that we see on TV these days gives no hint of the depth of passion experienced at these revivals when people could temporarily lose their minds in contemplation of the divine.
Uncle Tom's Cabin is certainly an effort against slavery but reading it reminded me of a revival. The plot starts out on a farm in Kentucky where the slaves are well treated by the owner. Then as the novel develops, the emotional intensity does as well until, in the end, we have a Christ-like figure (Uncle Tom) offering up his soul and asking forgiveness for the evil Simon Legree even as Legree is beating him to death. Along the way, Biblical passages become more frequently inserted in the text. The reader is aroused to a peak of moral indignation - how could such a barbaric system exist! How could any Christian allow it to continue?
This technique worked magic on the sensibilities of the time. This book was a huge bestseller that virtually everyone (in the North) had read within a year of publication. It is filled with characters that represent every point of view on the issue of slavery, pro and con. It frequently mentions the Fugitive Slave Act that required Northerners to help apprehend and return escaped slaves, a bitter pill for the North to swallow.
Stowe is eager to promote Christianity as one would expect from someone with her upbringing. A repeated scene is of a character asking how God could be so cruel, absent or indifferent. In response a character will talk of the damnation that awaits those who do evil while paradise awaits the good. This fear of the Judgment Day is as central to the book as slavery and would appeal to religious readers while attempting to confound unbelievers.
Stowe's characterizations range from the realistic, such as Augustine St. Clare and his wife Marie, to others who seem either simple-minded (almost all the black characters) or unbelievably righteous as is Eva, the fair haired and frail child who embodies virtue, self-effacement and goodness, played against the willful black Topsy who has no known relatives and claims she was never born.
To a modern reader some of the dialog is almost nauseating in self-righteousness and piety but the plot is carried along seamlessly with the single exception of a short chapter near the end that serves to quickly jump to Canada to bring the reader up to date on escaped slaves Eliza and George, otherwise almost forgotten after being left in limbo early in the book.
Black characters are almost cartoons and racial characterizations abound - "wooly headed", "sons of Afric", etc. It's clear that though Stowe believes blacks are just as human as whites, they are on a lower level mentally. For her time, even this was a big advance. It's easy to see how African-Americans can use the name "uncle tom" in a derogatory way - since Tom turns the other cheek with a regularity and predictability that meekly accepts the way things are.
The book, like Christianity, is riven in this way. If Heaven is the only thing that matters then why should anyone care how people treat each other in this world? Why not just take things on the chin and smile until your time is up?
Uncle Tom's Cabin is a good read. Though almost as verbose as the novels of Dickens, it should be no problem for modern readers. Like most classics, everyone has heard of it but too few have read it.
An important read for understanding American history. December 20, 2008
Marilyn Squier (Fiskdale, MA USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
I have a love / hate relationship with the novel. Some days, I think that Stowe is unforgivably racist and cares only about preserving the souls of white people who are forfeiting their place in heaven by owning slaves. On other days, I am really impressed by the way that Stowe is working within many of the discourses of her time and creating a radical message about why slavery is unchristian, unpatriotic and unwomanly.
Of course, everyone knows that Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling book of its time, outselling even the Bible. It sold over 1,000,000 copies, and, for every copy sold, about 10 people read the book. For every person who read the book, about 50 saw a dramatic adaptation (possibly one of the versions by Aiken or Conway, which took away much of Stowe's message and retained mostly the melodrama and racial stereotypes). Nineteenth century America was steeped in Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was the first book to have spin-off products that are common for films today - actions figures, tea sets, dolls, board games, card games, sheet music. Uncle Tom's Cabin permeated American culture. It is speciously reported that, upon meeting Stowe during the Civil War, President Lincoln said, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that caused this great war."
There are so many things to fault Stowe for. In our politically correct culture, all of the faults of Stowe's novel are incredibly salient: she co-opts many racial stereotypes from the minstrel stage. Influenced by romantic racialism, she sees all blacks as simple, docile, childlike, and innately Christian. She sees people who are bi-racial, on the other hand, as intelligent and discontent with their position in slavery because of the "Anglo-Saxon blood" that is flowing through their veins.
But I think that what is important to focus on in Uncle Tom's Cabin is the way that Stowe created an inherently domestic attack on slavery by associating slavery with the public sphere of economy and capitalism and slaves with the domestic sphere of womanhood and Christianity.
Stowe was writing during the time of the cult of true womanhood. In the nineteenth century, women were supposed to be (sexually) pure, (religiously) pious, domestic (staying in the house / kitchen), and submissive (to men). Stowe believed in these prescriptive categories for women (as you can see through the characters of Mrs. Shelby and Mrs. Bird). To her, the best people in the world are mothers and Christians, and Christ himself is a mother-figure; he is pure, pious, domestic, and submissive. In Uncle Tom's Cabin, Eva and Uncle Tom are both Christ figures and mother figures because mother and Christ are interchangeable. They are the best type of people in the world. The Quaker Settlement, where Rachel Halliday gentle nudges her family to work in harmony in a Christian matriarchy is Stowe's vision of a millennial utopia.
Slavery is evil for Stowe because it is the opposite of Christianity. Christianity is domestic and spiritual, and slavery is a part of the public sphere; it is mundane. Appealing to white Northern women, Stowe shows how slavery creates problems for women: it separates mothers from their children and wives from their husbands. It is bad for the slaveholders because it corrupts them morally. Stowe also attacks the North for their culpability in Slavery. Through the character of Miss Ophelia, she shows that Northerners, while the want slaves to be free, do not want to come near black people with a ten foot pole. They have a visceral reaction to blackness. Through the Fugitive Slave Law, Northerners are helping Southerners to return blacks to slavery.
Lobbying for the inclusion of Uncle Tom's Cabin in the literary canon, Jane Tompkins says of the novel in Sensational Design, that it "retells the culture's central religious myth - the story of the crucifixion - in terms of the nation's greatest political conflict - slavery - and of its most cherished social beliefs - the sanctity of motherhood and the family."
I have read several editions of this novel, and I would highly recommend the Norton Critical edition, edited by Elizabeth Ammons (Tufts University) or the new Annotated edition, edited and annotated by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. (Harvard University). Like all Norton editions, Ammons's version includes important contextual information as well as some of the seminal scholarly essays about the novel. In the annotated version, Gates gives two lengthy introductions and useful annotations. One thing that he mentions throughout the annotations is the way that Stowe depicts Tom's relationship with Chloe. According to Gates he seem not to be very affected by their separation; when he reminisces about the past, he thinks about the white children that he misses, George Shelby and Eva St. Clare.
and important, classic, page-turner February 8, 2008
moviefanatic
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Uncle Tom's Cabin was mentioned so often in various Civil War era history books I've been reading that I'd decided to order it from Amazon! I was very surprised at how good it was, a page-turner and a tear jerker. I could see the historical importance of it and said that to me anyway, what Common Sense was to the Revolutionary War; Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the Civil War. It brought something important into the homes of people who had their own problems and thought little about slavery and awakened them. It is an easy read even by modern standards and I recommend it to everyone. Moviemaniac
Showing reviews 1-5 of 8
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