Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Negro Life in the Slave States of America, with fifty splendid...

The widespread sociopolitical implications of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the influential 18th century novel by author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-96), are also reflected in the remarkable publishing history of this seminal American work. The book, which began as a newspaper serial in 1851, entered domestic publication on March 20th, 1852, and by the end of the same year over 300,000 copies had been sold. This popularity was not strictly stateside; as early as May 1852, a Fleet Street publishing house was already printing and selling the antislavery novel across the pond. Depicted here is a page from one of these early British editions.