Uncle tom reviews
From 1850s
[edit] Reviews of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe
There are two types of review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin during the decade after its publication: the degree of truthfulness and the cultural impact of the piece. Initially, the reviews of Uncle Tom’s Cabin centered on the books’ very existence within northern and southern society and it’s effect within these two disparate spheres and then the review broadened their critique to include the books’ accuracy. Most of the reviews occurred within a two year period after the books’ publication and then again during the 1980’s. In the 1980’s the critiques centered around the books’ historical impact on American culture and it’s applicableness in more modern times.
The American reviews of the book immediately following its publication in 1853 seem to focus on the faithfulness of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to the realities of slavery in the south. The Independent stated that
“There is no exaggeration in this book. There is no attempt made to conceal the brighter aspects of the Slave-system, as they are met in the more northern agricultural districts, or sometimes in the household life of the cities…The book is full of the intensest [sic] Truth; the very Truth, of facts and of ethics.”
The Christian Inquirer, The National Era, Circular, The North American Review, have similar reviews of Stowe’s book, published within a month of the Independent’s, all agreeing with The Independent’s endorsement of Stowe’s novel as the epitome of honesty. The Morning Post also takes a similar stance to the Inquirer and the Independent in that the reviewer sees Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a useful window into the world of slavery, however the reviewer remarks on the flaws within Stowe’s writing,
“In a word the effect of ‘Uncle Tom's Cabin,’ as a whole, is grossly to exaggerate the actual evils of negro slavery in this country… as a didactic work, therefore, it should be swallowed with a considerable dose of allowance. But it is not as an instructive work, chiefly, that we now desire to regard it… Suffice it to say, then, that "Uncle Tom's Cabin,” even with our dose of allowance, is the finest picture yet painted of the abominable horrors of slavery, (bad enough at the best, and inevitably,) and that it is likely to do more for the cause of liberal abolitionism, than all that has been preached, said and sung, for a long time… The entire fiction is filled with instances of this peculiar power of the author to look on both sides of a question at once…Everything is fish that comes to her net, and she is equally at home with saint or sinner, black or white, high or low. She never suffers any mock modesty, reverence or respect for any world prejudice whatever to stand in the way of truth of portraiture or naturalness of dialogue.”
This review marks a typical “middle ground” review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, praising the groundbreaking status of Stowe’s book as an anti-slavery piece but criticizing it for the authors’ exaggeration of characters and scenarios (albeit useful and ultimately “harmless” exaggeration). While most northern reviewers during the 1850’s praise Stowe for daring to write an anti-slavery novel, the southern papers focus on Stowe’s lack of direct contact with plantations that employed slaves and cite her exaggerations within the novel. The Literary World uses Stowe’s character Eva to illustrate Stowe’s departure from the truth, “Slavery is bad enough, but for Heaven's sake, Mrs. Stowe! wife of one clergyman, daughter of another, and sister to half a dozen, respect the cloud of black cloth with which you are surrounded, and if you will write of such matters, give us plain unvarnished truth, and strive to advise us in our trouble—not to preach up bloodshed and massacre, for, by our present "Manual for Runaways," you but rivet the chains of those whom we firmly believe you honestly and truly desire to serve.”
To southern subscribers, Stowe’s account of slave life in America was an outrageous exaggeration, if not outright lie. Critics faulted her sources stating that she had never set foot on a southern plantation and had instead based her novel on the stories of runaway slaves. Stowe answered these claims with the publication of A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, citing real people upon whom the novel had been based or people who were found after publication whose stories were similar enough to the characters within the novel to have been an original source. The New York Times featured a series of reviews “by a southerner” which takes an overall positive stance along the lines of “The book is to the actual state of Slavery what poetry is to the real life of a people. Nothing is exhibited under the sober light of truth.” Over time this “southerner’s” stance becomes increasingly favorable towards Stowe’s novel and focuses more on the effects of the book within society instead of the inherent truthfulness of the text as do other reviews about a year after the books’ publication.
More recently (1980’s) reviews of Stowe’s book began to circulate again. Gerald T. Burns sites George Fredrickson’s The Black Image in the White Mind, quoting what has been termed “romantic racialism”, “…a once potent but long since discredited doctrine which held blacks to be humbler, less aggressive, more forgiving, better natural Christians than “Anglo-Saxon” whites.” This harkens back to the early debates over Stowe’s accuracy in the 1850’s. Later Burns also quotes J.C. Furnas, a white critic during the Civil Rights movement, as blaming Stowe for ‘the wrongheadness, distortions and wishful thinkings of Negroes in general and American Negroes in particular that still plagues us today.’” Thus the reviews continue to critique the book along the same two lines: cultural and moral, even after 150 years. The only difference is that during the 1980’s the critics have 150 years of history to context their cultural reviews within.
It’s unclear why the reviews of Uncle Tom’s Cabin started to reappear during the 1980’s after a 150 year hiatus. Perhaps it was the end of the civil rights movement or an increase in censorship of books within schools, or even the debut of the song ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ by Warrant. In any case, there is a definite increase in interest about Uncle Tom’s Cabin within literary circles. Over the years the veins for critique haven’t changed significantly. Reviewers are still questioning the relevance of Stowe’s book to modern society, analyzing her faithfulness to the reality of the slave system and also weighing the impact her work has had upon the American culture as we know it.
[edit] Bibliography
Burns, Gerald T. 'Review of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture.' By Thomas F. Gossett. American Literature, Vol. 58, No.2 (May 1986) pp. 299
The Christian Inquirer. ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’. New York: 10, April 1852.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Circular. Brooklyn: 30 May 1852.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The Independent. New York: 15 April 1852.
Levine, Robert S. Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Frederick Douglass’ Paper: An Analysis of Reception. American Literature, Vol. 64, No. 2. March 1992: P. 75.
"Colored” Views. The Literary World. New York: 24 April 1852.
“W.B.S.”Untitled. The Morning Post. Boston: 3 May 1852.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The National Era. Washington D.C.: 15, April 1852.
Walpole. Southern Slavery. A Glance at Uncle Tom’s Cabin. The New York Times. New York: 22, June 1853.
Review. The North American Review. Boston: October 1853.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. A Key To Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Boston: John P. Jewett & Co., 1853.
Stowe, Harriet Beecher. Uncle Tom’s Cabin, New York, New York: Penguin books, 1986.
[edit] Research Notes
[edit] JSTOR articles:
[edit] “The Music and Musicians in Nineteenth-Century Productions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Thomas L. Riis.
“It achieved record sales shortly after its publication in book form in March 1852 by the Boston publisher Jewett and was quickly translated… into oat least twenty-one languages… it was quickly converted into several plays both in the United States and abroad. By December 1852 nine versions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin were playing in New York theaters alone. Eleven productions had opened in London, where the book also had been an instant success, and several French and German theatrical versions thrived as well.
[edit] “Uncle Tom’s Cabin in Frederick Douglass’ Paper: An Analysis of Reception” by Robert S. Levine.
“In perhaps the most scathing indictment extant of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, J.C. Furnas, a white critic, blames Stowe for ‘the wrongheadness, distortions and wishful thinkings of Negroes in general and American Negroes in particular that still plagues us today.’”
“… the fact remains that numerous other African Americans have been troubled by the cultural consequences of Stowe’s sentimentalism and racialism. Donald Chaput is one of many who lament the ‘irreparable harm’ done by Stowe’s portrayal of Tom’s Christian resignation; and Addison Gayle Jr. argues that the stereotypical portrayal of Tom and other slaves simply reinforced Southern views of black interiority and submissiveness.”
pg.71
“For this reason, I think we need to take more seriously than we usually do the published record of the responses of literate free Northern blacks, who, outraged and despairing over the adoption of the Compromise of 1850’s Fugitive Slave Law, regarded Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as Yarborough puts it, “as a godsend destined to mobilize white sentiment against slavery just when resistance to southern forces was urgently needed.”
pg.72
(1st review in Douglass’ paper, a review of the serialized version which had a limited audience) “This thrilling Story, from the accomplished pen of Mrs. Stowe, has appeared week after week, by installments, in the National Era, and has been perused with intense interest by thousands of people. The friends of freedom owe the Authoress a large debt of gratitude for this essential service rendered by her to the cause they love.”
pg.73-4
“Ultimately, Wilson begs a very important question: Can a white writer do “faithful” justice to the black experience of slavery? The question would not be raised explicity in the pages of Frederick Douglass’ Paper for nearly a year, and then with a vengeance in an epistolary debate between Frederick Douglass and Martin Delany.”
[edit] “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and American Culture” by Thomas F. Gossett. 1985.”
“Since its publication, Uncle Tom’s Cabin has been in a continual cycle of repression and rediscovery. No sooner is it brought into critical discourse by Edmund Wilson, Kenneth S. Lynn, E. Bruce Kirkham, or Ann Douglas than it disappears once more into marginality.”
p. 305
“The remarkable diversity of these concerns is unified by Gossett’s conviction that “To read the opinions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which have been expressed over the past 130 years is something like examining the history of racism in America for this period, at least racism as it has been applied to blacks.”
p. 306-307
[edit] Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture by Thomas F. Gossett. 1985.
“J.C. Furnas once likened the career of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to a three-stage rocket: Launched as a novel in 1852, Stowe’s antislavery tale soared to new heights of popularity as a play over the next half century, before receiving yet another sendoff in the era of silent film. If we could add to Furnas’s conceit a pre-ignition phase, when pressures toward the original act of creation were building in the life of the author and the struggles of her time – and a final orbit—the critical debate over the work that has continued into our own day – then this is the historic literary flight that Thomas Gossett records in Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture.”
“He [Gossett] begins by identifying Stowe’s “ideas of race” with what George Fredrickson, in his The Black Image in the White Mind, has termed “romantic racialism”: a once potent but long since discredited doctrine which held blacks to be humbler, less aggressive, more forgiving, better natural Christians than “Anglo-Saxon” whites.
p.299
[edit] Virginia.edu website Reviews of Uncle Tom's Cabin
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rehp.html
[edit] The Independent, New York: 15 April 1852.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rere12at.html
“ There is no exaggeration in this book. There is no attempt made to conceal the brighter aspects of the Slave-system, as they are met in the more northern agricultural districts, or sometimes in the household life of the cities. There is shown too a really wonderful appreciation of the difficulties in which the master finds himself entangled, when aroused to his duty as a Christian toward those who have come into his hands from his Fathers; and we have never heard the arguments of the Slave-holder more fairly or forcibly stated by his own lips than they are by Mrs. Stowe, in the clear, sarcastic, ringing words of the generous St. Clare. But yet the truth of the matter is told, after all. The book is full of the intensest Truth; the very Truth, of facts and of ethics. As the artist attains the highest truth, that which is really enduring and valuable, not in the simple mechanical imitation of lines and colors as they meet him at any one point in Nature, but in the gathering from different scenes the element which in each is differential and characteristic, and in grouping and combining these various elements, breadth of view, sharpness of outline, softness of tone, with exquisite commingling of rock, meadow, stream and homestead, until they form a scene such as perhaps has never been strictly and literally realized in any one existing landscape, yet such as might be combined at any time, as lies within the range of constant possibility—so in this book, though the several incidents as connected with the life of "Uncle Tom" may not all have occurred, we have the fullest clearest Truth on the matter of Slavery. The tremendous liability under which the husbands and wives whom it afflicts continually lie, of being severed forever and hopelessly at any moment; the perfect power which it gives to the master over the strength of man, the chastity of woman, and the keenest sensibility of the youth and the child; the cruelties which it allows and does not punish; the debasement and barbarism which it tends to perpetuate in the black, and the terrible reacting influence on the Master which is diffused from its whole structure—all is truthfully expressed here.”
[edit] The Christian Inquirer. New York: 10 April 1852:
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rere115at.html "But the spirit of truth—of stern, downright truth of this story, is far more extraordinary than its picturesque fidelity in details. Mrs. Stowe has avoided all the dangers to one or another of which most of those who write on this subject fall a prey. She has resisted the temptation to exaggeration of every kind. She has shown the evils inherent in the system, but has painted generous and noble characters among those involved in it. Mr. Garrison's proverb that "Where there is a sin there is a sinner," has not blinded her to nature's proverb, that "This is a very mixed-up world." On the other hand, no longing after poetic justice, no wish of the novelist to bring about a happy termination of the story, has caused her to shrink from the tragic truth of the facts as they are.”
[edit] The Literary World. New York: 24 April 1852. “Colored Views”.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rere22at.html “How to treat her book is our difficulty at present, for as a lengthy abolition tract, we desire no acquaintance with it, as a political affair, it is entirely out of our province, its descriptions of the white and colored races as they exist below "Mason's and Dixon's" are too nearly antipodical to reality to entitle it to much usefulness as an ethnological essay, and finally when warm weather is coming rapidly in, a novel, with heroes and heroines exclusively African, and winding up by the introduction of a colored lady whom a white gentleman of birth, respectability, and wealth has taken to wife, thereby setting an example to a rising generation of amalgamationists, is rather too potent and decidely odorous for our—perhaps fastidious—taste. We must regard the work as a whole, and rather an odd one, being neither fish nor flesh, nor yet good red herring.”
“ The episode of Eva St. Clare is truly beautiful and affecting—nay, for humor and pathos, a gem—and causes us the more to regret that such scenes should be introduced but to gild a pill of abolition gun-cotton, and to persuade innocent women and ignorant men to swallow it as good, honest medicine. The negro dialogue has been very generally commended, and we are willing to confess that the author knows quite as much about it as she does of slaves and slavery, but unfortunately very little of either.” “Slavery is bad enough, but for Heaven's sake, Mrs. Stowe! wife of one clergyman, daughter of another, and sister to half a dozen, respect the cloud of black cloth with which you are surrounded, and if you will write of such matters, give us plain unvarnished truth, and strive to advise us in our trouble—not to preach up bloodshed and massacre, for, by our present "Manual for Runaways," you but rivet the chains of those whom we firmly believe you honestly and truly desire to serve. We are told that northern men will take the book for a caricature, but the author appeals to the South to prove its truth. She also hopes she has done justice to "that nobility, generosity, and humanity, which, in many cases, characterize individuals at the South," and then proceeds to add that they are not common anywhere. On the eve of closing a book capable of producing infinite mischief—for it lacks neither wit nor talent, only truth—she very naturally appeals again to "the generous, noble-minded men and women of the South," you whose virtue, and purity, and magnanimity of character, &c., &c. Modesty! thy name is Beecher.”
[edit] The Morning Post. Boston: 3 May 1852 by “W.B.S.”.
http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/reviews/rere50at.html
“But we would here remark that some portions are very highly colored. The main facts stated, also, may have occurred somewhere or other, and at distant intervals of time; but the aggregation of so many rare horrors into two small volumes, produces a picture which we are happy to believe does not do justice to practical slavery in our southern states. In a word the effect of “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” as a whole, is grossly to exaggerate the actual evils of negro slavery in this country. As a didactic work, therefore, it should be swallowed with a considerable dose of allowance. But it is not as an instructive work, chiefly, that we now desire to regard it. As chroniclers of the literature of the day, we have much more to do with the conception and execution of books, as merely literary works, than with their sentiment or effect, although these latter may be all that make them practically important. Suffice it to say, then, that “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” even with our dose of allowance, is the finest picture yet painted of the abominable horrors of slavery, (bad enough at the best, and inevitably,) and that it is likely to do more for the cause of liberal abolitionism, than all that has been preached, said and sung, for a long time.” “ The entire fiction is filled with instances of this peculiar power of the author to look on both sides of a question at once, and this (so called) masculine quality of mind is sustained by an exceeding ease in the management of details and the handling of masculine facts of all sorts. One wonders, indeed, where a lady could pick up so much stuff, and how she could acquire such free and easy manners in disposing of it. Everything is fish that comes to her net, and she is equally at home with saint or sinner, black or white, high or low. She never suffers any mock modesty, reverence or respect for any world prejudice whatever to stand in the way of truth of portraiture or naturalness of dialogue.”
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[edit] Other Sources
[edit] "Aspects of the Publishing History of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 1851-1900"
http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/exhibits/stowe/essay2.html
There were many reviews of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the United States and abroad, both for and against the book. More attention was given to the pros and cons of the slavery issue than to its literary merit, but almost everyone agreed that it was a powerful and moving book. Stowe was not prepared for the firestorm of criticism that erupted. Incensed by Southern accusations that she had imagined all the episodes described in Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Stowe, to defend her novel, dropped all her other projects to prepare A Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, a collection of eyewitness accounts, reproduced newspaper ads for runaway slaves, and reams of statistics and reports. The Key, too, was widely reprinted around the world. In addition to general press reviews and letters to the editors, the outrage from the South inspired the writing of more than twenty “Anti-Uncle Tom” novels, with the intent of counteracting its influence, and all showing how wonderful slave life was and how well and happy the slaves were. Such books appeared as early as July 30, 1852.
From the very beginning, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was thought to be suitable literature for children. Unrestrained by copyright, a number of special children’s versions were published in Europe from 1852 forward. In the United States, after the Civil War, the book’s popularity began to decline, and the literary establishment began to denigrate its “literary quality”, comparing it unfavorably to the writing of “high art” authors such as Henry James; it became increasingly popular as a children’s book. Once copyright had expired in 1893, many shortened children’s versions began to appear in the United States. It was also a frequent book of choice for school and Sunday school prizes.
[edit] Wikipedia "Uncle Tom's Cabin" Review Section
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin#Reactions_to_the_novel
"Immediately upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin outraged people in the American South. The novel was also roundly criticized by slavery supporters.
Acclaimed Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms declared the work utterly false, while others called the novel criminal and slanderous. Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama who was forced to leave town for selling the novel[18] to threatening letters sent to Stowe herself (including a package containing a slave's severed ear). Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel (see the Anti-Tom section below).
Some critics highlighted Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life, which (in their view) led her to create inaccurate descriptions of the region. For instance, she had never set foot on a Southern plantation. However, Stowe always said she based the characters of her book on stories she was told by runaway slaves in Cincinnati, Ohio, where Stowe lived. It is reported that, "She observed firsthand several incidents which galvanized her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel. Scenes she observed on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the emerging plot."
In response to these criticisms, in 1853 Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, an attempt to document the veracity of the novel's depiction of slavery. In the book, Stowe discusses each of the major characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and cites "real life equivalents" to them while also mounting a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had." Like the novel, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was also a best-seller. It should be noted, though, that while Stowe claimed A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin documented her previously consulted sources, she actually read many of the cited works only after the publication of her novel.
Despite these supposed and actual flaws in Stowe's research, and despite the shrill attacks from defenders of slavery, the novel still captured the imagination of many Americans. According to Stowe's son, when Abraham Lincoln met her in 1862 Lincoln commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line, and in a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln no mention of this comment was made. Since then, many writers have credited this novel with focusing Northern anger at the injustices of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law and helping to fuel the abolitionist movement. Union General and politician James Baird Weaver said that the book convinced him to become active in the abolitionist movement.
Uncle Tom's Cabin also created great interest in England. The first London edition appeared in May, 1852, and sold 200,000 copies. Some of this interest was because of British antipathy to America. As one prominent writer explained, "The evil passions which 'Uncle Tom' gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance [of slavery], but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting under the conceit of America—we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen. Our clergy hate her voluntary system—our Tories hate her democrats—our Whigs hate her parvenus—our Radicals hate her litigiousness, her insolence, and her ambition. All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy." Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain during the war, argued later that, "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life among the Lowly, published in 1852, exercised, largely from fortuitous circumstances, a more immediate, considerable and dramatic world-influence than any other book ever printed."
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As the first widely read political novel in the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin greatly influenced development of not only American literature but also protest literature in general. Later books which owe a large debt to Uncle Tom's Cabin include The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
Despite this undisputed significance, the popular perception of Uncle Tom's Cabin is as "a blend of children's fable and propaganda." The novel has also been dismissed by a number of literary critics as "merely a sentimental novel," while critic George Whicher stated in his Literary History of the United States that "Nothing attributable to Mrs. Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novel's enormous vogue; its author's resources as a purveyor of Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable. She had at most a ready command of broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos, and of these popular cements she compounded her book."
Other critics, though, have praised the novel. Edmund Wilson stated that "To expose oneself in maturity to Uncle Tom's Cabin may … prove a startling experience." Jane Tompkins states that the novel is one of the classics of American literature and wonders if many literary critics aren't dismissing the book because it was simply too popular during its day.
Over the years scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel (aside from the obvious themes, such as condemning slavery). For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religion's beliefs into the novel. Some scholars have stated that Stowe saw her novel as offering a solution to the moral and political dilemma that troubled many slavery opponents: whether engaging in prohibited behavior was justified in opposing evil. Was the use of violence to oppose the violence of slavery and the breaking of proslavery laws morally defensible? Which of Stowe's characters should be emulated, the passive Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris? Stowe's solution was similar to Ralph Waldo Emerson's: God's will would be followed if each person sincerely examined his principles and acted on them.
Scholars have also seen the novel as expressing the values and ideas of the Free Soil Movement. In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, while the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophelia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (3 years later) proclaimed that the North must transform itself and stand up for its antislavery principles.
Feminist theory can also be seen at play in Stowe's book, with the novel as a critique of the patriarchal nature of slavery.[64] For Stowe, blood relations rather than paternalistic relations between masters and slaves formed the basis of families. Moreover, Stowe viewed national solidarity as an extension of a person's family, thus feelings of nationality stemmed from possessing a shared race. Consequently she advocated African colonization for freed slaves and not amalgamation into American society.
The book has also been seen as an attempt to redefine masculinity as a necessary step toward the abolition of slavery.[65] In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist the vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered. In order to change the notion of manhood so that men could oppose slavery without jeopardizing their self-image or their standing in society, some abolitionists drew on principles of women's suffrage and Christianity as well as passivism, and praised men for cooperation, compassion, and civic spirit. Others within the abolitionist movement argued for conventional, aggressive masculine action. All the men in Stowe's novel are representations of either one kind of man or the other.
[edit] Interesting Factoids and Misc.
[edit] "Aspects of the Publishing History of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" 1851-1900"
http://specialcollections.vassar.edu/exhibits/stowe/essay2.html
There were no early Russian translations as the book was banned by the czars.
[edit] Wikipedia website
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncle_Tom's_Cabin#Reactions_to_the_novel
The book was so widely read that Sigmund Freud reported a number of patients with sado-masochistic tendencies who he believed had been influenced by reading about the whipping of slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
