Uncle Tom’s Cabin

Uncle Tom's Cabin is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852. It was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States. Three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day". The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves.

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 - July 1, 1896) was an American abolitionist and novelist, whose Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) attacked the cruelty of slavery; it reached millions as a novel and play, and became influential, even in Britain. It made the political issues of the 1850’s regarding slavery tangible to millions, energizing anti-slavery forces in the American North. It angered and embittered the South. The impact is summed up in a commonly quoted statement apocryphally attributed to Abraham Lincoln. When he met Stowe, it is claimed that he said, ＂So you’re the little woman that started this great war!＂ Harriet Beecher was born June 14, 1811, the seventh child of Protestant preacher, Lyman Beecher, whose children would later include the famed abolitionist theologian, Henry Ward Beecher. Harriet worked as a teacher with her older sister Catharine: her earliest publication was a geography for children, issued under her sister’s name in 1833. In 1836, Harriet married Calvin Stowe, a clergyman and widower.