Stowe, Harriet Beecher | "Any mind that is capable of a real sorrow is capable of good."

Stowe, Harriet Beecher

Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly. Boston: John P. Jewett; Cleveland: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, 1852

2 vols., 8vo (190 x115 mm). Title-page vignettes, 6 engraved plates; faint foxing primarily to preliminary leaves, all else a bright copy. Publisher's brown cloth (BAL's binding B), gilt emblem on front covers within blind-stamped frame, back covers blocked in blind, spines lettered gilt with blind ornamentation, cream endpapers, Stowe's signature tipped onto front free endpaper of vol.1; some slight spotting, slightly cocked. Housed in custom clamshell case. [With:] The Key to Uncle Toms Cabin; Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon which the Story is Founded. Boston: John P. Jewett & Co.; Cleveland: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington; London: Low & Co., 1853. Large 8vo (240 x 155 mm). Text in two columns, 3pp. appendix and 3pp. index at the back. Publisher's dark brown cloth, decoratively stamped in blind, spine gilt-lettered (BAL C binding); early ownership signature on front free endpapers. Housed in custom slipcase. First edition, second printing.

(Group lots not subject to return.)

First edition, first printing, of Stowe's impassioned antislavery novel, which she had been inspired to write after passage of the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law. Uncle Tom's Cabin was first published in serial form in the abolitionist periodical National Era. Originally it had been Stowe's intention to complete the work in a few issues of the magazine, but the public's interest in the story was so strong that she continued it for ten months (5 June 1851–April 1852). Prior to the printing of the last two serial installments, J. P. Jewett issued the two-volume work (20 March 1852).

The novel was a runaway sensation, with over 120,000 copies sold by October 1852. "To those engaged in fighting slavery it appeared as an indictment of all the evils inherent in the system they opposed; to the pro-slavery forces it was a slanderous attack on 'the Southern way of life' ... Whatever its weaknesses as a literary work—structural looseness and excess of sentiment among them—the social impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin on the United States was greater than that of any book before or since" (PMM).

A very handsome copy, with cut signature of Stowe's tipped in.

REFERENCE:

BAL 19343; BAL 19359; Grolier, American 61; Negro History 94; PMM 332; Sabin 92457

PROVENANCE:

James E. Hogg (early ownership inscriptions to front free endpapers)