&&LDIV&&R&&LDIV&&R&&LI&&RUncle Toms Cabin&&L/I&&R, by &&LB&&RHarriet Beecher Stowe&&L/B&&R, is part of the &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R &&LI&&R &&L/I&&Rseries, 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 &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics&&L/I&&R: &&LDIV&&R New introductions commissioned from todays 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 readers viewpoints and expectations - Bibliographies for further reading - Indices & Glossaries, when appropriate All editions are beautifully designed and are printed to superior specifications; some include illustrations of historical interest. &&LI&&RBarnes & Noble Classics &&L/I&&Rpulls together a constellation of influences―biographical, historical, and literary―to enrich each readers understanding of these enduring works.&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&R &&L/DIV&&R&&LDIV&&RNearly every young author dreams of writing a book that will literally change the world. A few have succeeded, and &&LB&&RHarriet Beecher Stowe&&L/B&&R is such a marvel. Although the American anti-slavery movement had existed at least as long as the nation itself, Stowe’s &&LI&&RUncle Tom’s Cabin&&L/I&&R (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. &&LP&&RToday 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. &&LI&&RUncle Tom’s Cabin&&L/I&&R 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. &&L/P&&R&&LP&&R&&LB&&RAmanda Claybaugh&&L/B&&R is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University.&&L/P&&R&&L/DIV&&R Amanda Claybaugh is Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. From Amanda Claybaughs Introduction to Uncle Toms Cabin The publication of Uncle Toms Cabin lifted Stowe out of a purely Beecher orbit and put her in the stratosphere of international fame. But the novel is nonetheless indebted, as Joan D. Hedrick shows in her Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life (1994), to the many and varied Beecher family projects. The fathers battle for the soul of the nation, the brothers Christian ministries, one sisters advocacy for women and slaves, anothers celebration of the properly run home-all of these can be found in Uncle Tom alongside Stowes own gifts: her ear for dialect and her eye for detail, her masterful handling of suspense and pathos, and her sympathetic embrace of all the nations regions. The result was a novel more popular, and more influential, than anyone could have imagined. When Calvin Stowe negotiated Uncle Toms contract on his wifes behalf, he confided to the publishers that he hoped the novel would be successful enough so that his wife could buy a "good black silk dress" (Thomas F. Gossett, Uncle Toms Cabin and American Culture , 1985, p. 165). The novel turned out, of course, to be far more successful than that. Within the first week of publication, Uncle Toms Cabin sold 10,000 copies; within its first year, 300,000 (this in a nation with a total population of only 24 million). Uncle Toms Cabin was the first American novel to sell more than a million copies, and no book of any kind, except for the Bible, had ever sold so well. Astonishing as the sales figures are, even they fail to suggest the full extent of Uncle Toms popularity. For the book was published in an era when novels were still treated as a kind of communal property, borrowed from circulating libraries, passed from hand to hand, read aloud to entire households at a time; knowing this, one reviewer speculated that Uncle Tom had ten readers for every copy sold. The best measure of Uncle Toms popularity lies, then, not in numbers, but rather in the kind of anecdotal evidence that Thomas F. Gossett has collected in the book noted above. Reading through the letters and journals of Stowes contemporaries, Gossett finds Richard Henry Dana, Jr., noting that four men were reading Uncle Tom in a single railw