Over Uncle Tom's Dead Body: Publication Context and Textual Variation in Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin

Wesley Raabe <wraabe_at_kent_dot_edu>, Kent State University

Abstract

This poster invites you to explore an article published in the National Era — on 18 March 1852, the same day publisher John P. Jewett's two-volume edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin was made available for sale — as a commentary on the interaction between Harriet Beecher Stowe's fiction and what the Era reports as the Southern reality. And it invites you to contemplate Stowe's two alternate explanations for young George Shelby's punch, which levels Simon Legree. The poster promotes “Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: an Electronic Edition of the National Era Version” (1996), a digital dissertation project available through the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~wnr4c/index.htm

Poster Abstract

On 18 March 1852, publisher John P. Jewett's two-volume edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin was made available for sale. On the same day, an installment of Stowe's ongoing serial appeared in the National Era. In the newspaper, opposite the page on which Stowe's devilish slaveholder Simon Legree says “I don't sell dead niggers,” a brief reprint indicates that of a Greenville, South Carolina slave auction had included for sale “one fellow deceased.” This poster invites you to explore the newspaper article as a commentary on the interaction between Stowe's fiction and what the Era reports as the Southern reality. And it invites you to contemplate Stowe's two alternate explanations for young George Shelby's punch, which levels Simon Legree. The poster promotes “Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: an Electronic Edition of the National Era Version” (1996), a digital dissertation project available through the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at http://www.iath.virginia.edu/~wnr4c/index.htm.

Poster

Download poster (PDF file)