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72-871: The first Grand Opera House opened as the Varieties Theatre (also known as Field's Varieties ) in May 1852 under the management of Joseph M. Field . It was designed after the Salle Barthélemy; a theatre located on the Rue Neuve-Saint-Nicolas in Paris, France that had opened previously in June 1851. The inaugural performance at the Varieties Theatre occurred on May 10, 1852, with a double bill of Edward W. Shands' You Can't Open and

144-435: A "critique of American society far more devastating than any delivered by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville ." Uncle Tom's Cabin has exerted an influence equaled by few other novels in history. Upon publication, Uncle Tom's Cabin ignited a firestorm of protest from defenders of slavery (who created a number of books in response to the novel) while the book elicited praise from abolitionists. The novel

216-536: A "serious attempt to resurrect it as both a central document in American race relations and a significant moral and political exploration of the character of those relations." In China, Uncle Tom's Cabin experienced a revival of interest in the early 1960s. In the Chinese communist view of the book, Uncle Tom was interpreted as having been betrayed by his "Christian consciousness." In 1961, Sun Weishi directed

288-517: A 3,700-acre (15 km ) plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland , owned by Isaac Riley. Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario ), where he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient. Stowe was also inspired by the posthumous biography of Phebe Ann Jacobs , a devout Congregationalist of Brunswick, Maine . Born on

360-410: A book. Convinced the book would be popular, Jewett made the unusual decision (for the time) to have six full-page illustrations by Hammatt Billings engraved for the first printing. Published in book form on March 20, 1852, the novel sold 3,000 copies on that day alone, and soon sold out its complete print run. In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in

432-700: A dying child." Another reader is described as obsessing on the book at all hours and having considered renaming her daughter Eva. Evidently the death of Little Eva affected a lot of people at that time, because in 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston alone were given that name. Despite this positive reaction from readers, for decades literary critics dismissed the style found in Uncle Tom's Cabin and other sentimental novels because these books were written by women and so prominently featured what one critic called "women's sloppy emotions". Another literary critic said that had

504-448: A large role in Uncle Tom's Cabin —and because of Stowe's frequent use of direct authorial interjections on religion and faith—the novel often takes the "form of a sermon". Over the years scholars have postulated a number of theories about what Stowe was trying to say with the novel (aside from the major theme of condemning slavery). For example, as an ardent Christian and active abolitionist, Stowe placed many of her religious beliefs into

576-470: A letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln no mention of this comment was made. Many writers have also credited the 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

648-634: A middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of Emily Shelby's maid Eliza—to Mr. Haley, a coarse slave trader. Emily Shelby is averse to this idea because she had promised her maid that her child would never be sold; Emily's son, George Shelby, hates to see Tom go because he sees the man as his friend and mentor. When Eliza overhears Mr. and Mrs. Shelby discussing plans to sell Tom and Harry, Eliza determines to run away with her son. The novel states that Eliza made this decision because she fears losing her only surviving child (she had already miscarried two children). Eliza departs that night, leaving

720-527: A note of apology to her mistress. She later makes a dangerous crossing over the ice of the Ohio River to escape her pursuers. As Tom is sold, Mr. Haley takes him to a riverboat on the Mississippi River and from there Tom is to be transported to a slave market. While on board, Tom meets Eva, an angelic little white girl. They quickly become friends. Eva falls into the river and Tom dives into

792-527: A novelist as an impassioned pamphleteer". Edward Rothstein has claimed that Baldwin missed the point and that the purpose of the novel was "to treat slavery not as a political issue but as an individually human one – and ultimately a challenge to Christianity itself." George Orwell in his essay " Good Bad Books ", first published in Tribune in November 1945, claims that "perhaps the supreme example of

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864-558: A slave hunter hired by Mr. Haley. Eventually Loker and his men trap Eliza and her family, causing George to shoot him in the side. Worried that Loker may die, Eliza convinces George to bring the slave hunter to a nearby Quaker settlement for medical treatment. Back in New Orleans , St. Clare debates slavery with his Northern cousin Ophelia who, while opposing slavery, is prejudiced against black people. St. Clare, however, believes he

936-531: A slave plantation in Lake Hiawatha, New Jersey , Jacobs was enslaved for most of her life, including by the president of Bowdoin College. In her final years, Jacobs lived as a free woman, laundering clothes for Bowdoin students. She achieved respect from her community due to her devout religious beliefs, and her funeral was widely attended. Another source Stowe used as research for Uncle Tom's Cabin

1008-409: A slave's severed ear). Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon wrote their own books in opposition to Stowe's novel. Some critics highlighted Stowe's paucity of life-experience relating to Southern life, saying that it led her to create inaccurate descriptions of the region. For instance, she had never been to a Southern plantation. Stowe always said she based the characters of her book on stories she

1080-580: A subtheme, this scene could foreshadow future events that put alcohol in a bad light. Because Stowe saw motherhood as the "ethical and structural model for all of American life" and also believed that only women had the moral authority to save the United States from the demon of slavery, another major theme of Uncle Tom's Cabin is the moral power and sanctity of women. Through characters like Eliza, who escapes from slavery to save her young son (and eventually reunites her entire family), or Eva, who

1152-470: A version of " Al Aaraaf " and later declaimed the incident as an attempted hoax. Poe wrote directly to Field enlisting his help in defense against the Boston "Frogpondians". Among his plays was Family Ties , written for Dan Marble for a prize of $ 500. He also wrote a dramatic response to Harriet Beecher Stowe 's 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin which he staged in New Orleans. Field established

1224-486: A white woman on the steamboat carrying Tom further south states, "The most dreadful part of slavery, to my mind, is its outrages of feelings and affections—the separating of families, for example."). One way Stowe showed the evil of slavery was how this "peculiar institution" forcibly separated families from each other. One of the subthemes presented in the novel is temperance . Stowe made it somewhat subtle and in some cases she wove it into events that would also support

1296-453: A writing style that evoked a reader's sympathy and emotion. Uncle Tom's Cabin has been called a "representative" example of a sentimental novel. The power in this type of writing can be seen in the reaction of contemporary readers. Georgiana May, a friend of Stowe's, wrote a letter to the author, saying: "I was up last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing Uncle Tom's Cabin . I could not leave it any more than I could have left

1368-633: Is Dinah, who operates on passion. During the course of the novel Ophelia is transformed, just as the Republican Party (three 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. For Stowe, blood relations rather than paternalistic relations between masters and slaves formed

1440-451: Is considered an influential "landmark" of protest literature. Uncle Tom's Cabin had an "incalculable" impact on the 19th-century world and captured the imagination of many Americans. In a likely apocryphal story that alludes to the novel's impact, when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe in 1862 he supposedly commented, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." Historians are undecided if Lincoln actually said this line, and in

1512-400: Is dominated by a single theme: the evil and immorality of slavery. While Stowe weaves other subthemes throughout her text, such as the moral authority of motherhood and the power of Christian love, she emphasizes the connections between these and the horrors of slavery. Stowe sometimes changed the story's voice so she could give a " homily " on the destructive nature of slavery (such as when

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1584-489: Is more oppressive than an aristocracy of station... Our pity for the victim is swallowed up by our hatred of the tyrant. Stowe sent a copy of the book to Charles Dickens , who wrote her in response: "I have read your book with the deepest interest and sympathy, and admire, more than I can express to you, both the generous feeling which inspired it, and the admirable power with which it is executed." The historian and politician Thomas Babington Macaulay wrote in 1852 that "it

1656-477: Is not biased, even though he is a slave owner. In an attempt to show Ophelia that her prejudiced views against black people are wrong, St. Clare purchases Topsy, a young black slave, and asks Ophelia to educate her. After Tom has lived with the St. Clares for two years, Eva grows very ill. Before she dies she experiences a vision of heaven , which she shares with the people around her. As a result of her death and vision,

1728-454: Is seen as the "ideal Christian", Stowe shows how she believed women could save those around them from even the worst injustices. Though later critics have noted that Stowe's female characters are often domestic clichés instead of realistic women, Stowe's novel "reaffirmed the importance of women's influence" and helped pave the way for the women's rights movement in the following decades. Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs show up in

1800-464: Is taken to rural Louisiana with other new slaves including Emmeline, whom Simon Legree has purchased to use as a sex slave . Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom refuses Legree's order to whip his fellow slave. Legree beats Tom viciously and resolves to crush his new slave's faith in God . Despite Legree's cruelty, Tom refuses to stop reading his Bible and comforting the other slaves as best he can. While at

1872-429: Is tested by the hardships of the plantation. He has two visions, one of Jesus and one of Eva, which renew his resolve to remain a faithful Christian, even unto death. He encourages Cassy to escape, which she does, taking Emmeline with her. When Tom refuses to tell Legree where Cassy and Emmeline have gone, Legree orders his overseers to kill Tom. As Tom is dying, he forgives the overseers who savagely beat him. Humbled by

1944-551: Is the most valuable addition that America has made to English literature." Charles Francis Adams Sr. , the American ambassador to Britain during the Civil 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." Leo Tolstoy claimed that Uncle Tom's Cabin

2016-522: The American South were outraged at the novel's release, with the book also roundly criticized by slavery supporters. Southern novelist William Gilmore Simms declared the work utterly false while also calling it slanderous. Reactions ranged from a bookseller in Mobile, Alabama , being forced to leave town for selling the novel to threatening letters sent to Stowe (including a package containing

2088-702: The Era office when she missed an issue. The final installment was released in the April 1, 1852, issue of Era . Stowe arranged for the story's copyright to be registered with the United States District Court for the District of Maine . She renewed her copyright in 1879 and the work entered the public domain on May 12, 1893. While the story was still being serialized, the publisher John P. Jewett contracted with Stowe to turn Uncle Tom's Cabin into

2160-602: The Grand Opera House in St. Louis in 1852. He died at a hotel in Mobile, Alabama on January 28, 1856, and was buried at Mount Auburn Cemetery , near where his daughter was studying. This article about an American playwright is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Uncle Tom%27s Cabin Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe . Published in two volumes in 1852,

2232-754: The New Orleans Picayune . On, November 6, 1837, Field married actress Eliza Riddle , with whom he had co-starred in several performances. Their daughter, Kate Field , was born in 1838, and went on to become a successful journalist and author. From 1841–1842, he traveled in Europe as an international reporter for the Picayune . Field seemingly attended the Boston Lyceum lecture in October 1845 when Edgar Allan Poe controversially recited

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2304-416: The 'good bad' book is Uncle Tom's Cabin . It is an unintentionally ludicrous book, full of preposterous melodramatic incidents; it is also deeply moving and essentially true; it is hard to say which quality outweighs the other." But he concludes "I would back Uncle Tom's Cabin to outlive the complete works of Virginia Woolf or George Moore , though I know of no strictly literary test which would show where

2376-620: The Philodramatic Society, a dramatic group specializing in German language theatre, from 1856 through 1859. When the theatre was purchased by James Buchanan Eads in 1858 the theatre was renamed the St. Louis Opera House (sometimes known by its German translation St. Louis Opernhaus ). It continued to operate under that name until 1861 when it closed; only to re-open for periodical intervals between 1861 and 1864, once again operating under

2448-567: The United States. Eight printing presses, running incessantly, could barely keep up with the demand. By mid-1853, sales of the book dramatically decreased and Jewett went out of business during the Panic of 1857 . In June 1860, the right to publish Uncle Tom's Cabin passed to the Boston firm Ticknor and Fields , which put the book back in print in November 1862. After that demand began to yet again increase. Houghton Mifflin Company acquired

2520-467: 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. Uncle Tom's Cabin is written in the sentimental and melodramatic style common to 19th-century sentimental novels and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction). These genres were the most popular novels of Stowe's time and were "written by, for, and about women" along with featuring

2592-460: The abolitionist movement. Frederick Douglass was "convinced both of the social uses of the novel and of Stowe's humanitarianism" and heavily promoted the novel in his newspaper during the book's initial release. Though Douglass said Uncle Tom's Cabin was "a work of marvelous depth and power," he also published criticism of the novel, most prominently by Martin Delany . In a series of letters in

2664-454: 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. In this view, abolitionists had begun to resist

2736-539: The book in "Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History." Tompkins praised the style so many other critics had dismissed, writing that sentimental novels showed how women's emotions had the power to change the world for the better. She also said that the popular domestic novels of the 19th century, including Uncle Tom's Cabin , were remarkable for their "intellectual complexity, ambition, and resourcefulness"; and that Uncle Tom's Cabin offers

2808-442: The book with his 1952 novel Invisible Man , with Ellison figuratively killing Uncle Tom in the opening chapter. In 1945 James Baldwin published his influential and infamous critical essay "Everbody's Protest Novel". In the essay, Baldwin described Uncle Tom's Cabin as "a bad novel, having, in its self-righteousness, virtuous sentimentality". He argued that the novel lacked psychological depth, and that Stowe, "was not so much

2880-513: The character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve. In the United States, Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel and the second best-selling book of the 19th century, following the Bible. It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. The influence attributed to the book was so great that a likely apocryphal story arose of Abraham Lincoln meeting Stowe at

2952-424: The character of the man they have killed, both men become Christians. George Shelby, Arthur Shelby's son, arrives to buy Tom's freedom, but Tom dies shortly after they meet. On their boat ride to freedom, Cassy and Emmeline meet George Harris' sister Madame de Thoux and accompany her to Canada. Madame de Thoux and George Harris were separated in their childhood. Cassy discovers that Eliza is her long-lost daughter who

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3024-654: The cited works only after the publication of her novel. Uncle Tom's Cabin also created great interest in the United Kingdom. The first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies. Some of this interest was due to anti-Americanism in Britain. As English lawyer Nassau William Senior argued, "The evil passions which Uncle Tom gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance, but national jealousy and national vanity. We have long been smarting under

3096-534: The cities of Chicago, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. In 1935 the theatre was renamed the Grand Theatre when it became part of a chain of a burlesque circuit of theaters. It operated under that name into the early 1960s, and was demolished in 1963 to make room for Busch Memorial Stadium . 38°37′31″N 90°11′27″W  /  38.6253°N 90.1907°W  / 38.6253; -90.1907 Joseph M. Field Joseph M. Field (1810 – January 28, 1856)

3168-400: The comedy Where There's a Will ; the latter starring Field and his wife, the actress Eliza Riddle Field . Field's tenure as manager lasted only one season, and his last performance as manager and actor at the Varieties Theatre occurred on June 13, 1852. The theatre remained closed until it was taken over by the St. Louis journalist Henry Boernstein who utilized the theatre for performances of

3240-464: 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... She taught us how to prove that democrats may be tyrants, that an aristocracy of caste

3312-562: 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 Will Movement . In this view, the character of George Harris embodies the principles of free labor, and the complex character of Ophelia represents those Northerners who condoned compromise with slavery. In contrast to Ophelia

3384-484: The dominant theme. One example of this is when Augustine St. Clare is killed, he attempted to stop a brawl between two inebriated men in a cafe and was stabbed. Another example is the death of Prue, who was whipped to death for being drunk on a consistent basis; however, her reasons for doing so is due to the loss of her baby. In the opening of the novel, the fates of Eliza and her son are being discussed between slave owners over wine. Considering that Stowe intended this to be

3456-402: The first Chinese translation in 1901, which was also the first American novel translated into that language. The book opens with a Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby facing the loss of his farm because of debts. Even though he and his wife Emily Shelby believe that they have a benevolent relationship with their slaves, Shelby decides to raise the needed funds by selling two of them—Uncle Tom,

3528-496: The historical effects of the book as a "vital antislavery tool". Nonetheless, the novel remains a "landmark" in protest literature, with later books such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson owing a large debt to it. Stowe, a Connecticut -born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, wrote the novel as a response to the passage, in 1850, of

3600-488: The management of John W. Norton. The theatre was destroyed by fire on November 23, 1884, during Norton's tenure. The second Grand Opera House was built over a ten-month period on the same property as the first theatre. It opened on September 14, 1885, with a production headlined by Nat Goodwin . In 1898 the theatre was purchased by the Tri-State Amusement Company which operated a chain of theatres in

3672-488: The many "publicly available documents" detailing the horrors of slavery. Uncle Tom's Cabin first appeared as a 40-week serial in The National Era , an abolitionist periodical, starting with the June 5, 1851, issue. It was originally intended as a shorter narrative that would run for only a few weeks. Stowe expanded the story significantly, however, and it was instantly popular, such that protests were sent to

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3744-625: The name Varieties Theatre. In 1868 the theatre re-opened under a new name, the Wakefield Theatre . In operated under this name until 1874 when it was sold to Benedict DeBar. It was then renamed the DeBar Opera House , only to be renamed the Grand Opera House three years later when Pierre Chouteau purchased the theatre after DeBar's death in 1877. It operated as the Grand Opera House for the next seven years under

3816-481: The novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S. , and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War". Stowe, a Connecticut -born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary , was part of the religious Beecher family and an active abolitionist . She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on

3888-419: The novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel", and another described the book as "primarily a derivative piece of hack work". In The Literary History of the United States , George F. Whicher called Uncle Tom's Cabin " Sunday-school fiction", full of "broadly conceived melodrama, humor, and pathos". In 1985 Jane Tompkins expressed a different view with her famous defense of

3960-432: The novel's final, overarching theme—the exploration of the nature of Christian love and how she feels Christian theology is fundamentally incompatible with slavery. This theme is most evident when Tom urges St. Clare to "look away to Jesus" after the death of St. Clare's beloved daughter Eva. After Tom dies, George Shelby eulogizes Tom by saying, "What a thing it is to be a Christian." Because Christian themes play such

4032-418: 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

4104-417: The other characters resolve to change their lives, Ophelia promising to throw off her personal prejudices against blacks, Topsy saying she will better herself, and St. Clare pledging to free Tom. Before St. Clare can follow through on his pledge, he dies after being stabbed outside a tavern. His wife reneges on her late husband's vow and sells Tom at auction to a vicious plantation owner named Simon Legree. Tom

4176-496: The paper, Delany accused Stowe of "borrowing (and thus profiting) from the work of black writers to compose her novel" and chastised Stowe for her "apparent support of black colonization to Africa." Martin was "one of the most out-spoken black critics" of Uncle Tom's Cabin at the time and later wrote Blake; or the Huts of America , a novel where an African American "chooses violent rebellion over Tom's resignation." White people in

4248-648: The plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another slave whom Legree used as a sex slave. Cassy tells her story to Tom. She was previously separated from her son and daughter when they were sold. She became pregnant again but killed the child because she could not tolerate having another child separated from her. Tom Loker, changed after being healed by the Quakers, returns to the story. He has helped George, Eliza, and Harry enter Canada from Lake Erie and become free. In Louisiana, Uncle Tom almost succumbs to hopelessness as his faith in God

4320-407: The rights from Ticknor in 1878. In 1879, a new edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin was released, repackaging the novel as an "American classic". Through the 1880s until its copyright expired, the book served as a mainstay and reliable source of income for Houghton Mifflin. By the end of the nineteenth century, the novel was widely available in a large number of editions and in the United States it became

4392-427: The river to save her life. Being grateful to Tom, Eva's father Augustine St. Clare buys him from Haley and takes him with the family to their home in New Orleans. Tom and Eva begin to relate to one another because of the deep Christian faith they both share. During Eliza's escape, she meets up with her husband George Harris, who had run away previously. They decide to attempt to reach Canada but are tracked by Tom Loker,

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4464-567: The second Fugitive Slave Act . Much of the book was composed at her house in Brunswick, Maine , where her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe , taught at his alma mater , Bowdoin College . Stowe was partly inspired to create Uncle Tom's Cabin by the slave narrative The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself (1849). Henson , a formerly enslaved black man, had lived and worked on

4536-584: The second best-selling book of that century after the Bible. Uncle Tom's Cabin sold equally well in Britain; the first London edition appeared in May 1852 and sold 200,000 copies. In a few years, over 1.5 million copies of the book were in circulation in Britain, although most of these were infringing copies (a similar situation occurred in the United States). By 1857, the novel had been translated into 20 languages. Translator Lin Shu published

4608-484: The start of the Civil War and declaring, "So this is the little lady who started this great war." The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of negative stereotypes about black people , including that of the namesake character " Uncle Tom ". The term came to be associated with an excessively subservient person. These later associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed

4680-425: The superiority lies." The negative associations related to Uncle Tom's Cabin , in particular how the novel and associated plays created and popularized racial stereotypes , have to some extent obscured the book's historical impact as a "vital antislavery tool". After the turn of the millennium, scholars such as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Hollis Robbins have re-examined Uncle Tom's Cabin in what has been called

4752-515: 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 a best-seller, but although Stowe claimed A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin documented her previously consulted sources, she actually read many of

4824-425: The vision of aggressive and dominant men that the conquest and colonization of the early 19th century had fostered. 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

4896-472: Was American Slavery as It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses , a volume co-authored by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters . Stowe also conducted interviews with people who escaped slavery. Stowe mentioned a number of these inspirations and sources in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853). This non-fiction book was intended to not only verify Stowe's claims about slavery but also point readers to

4968-580: Was a greater work than any play written by Shakespeare because it flowed from the love of God and man. In the 20th century, a number of writers attacked Uncle Tom's Cabin not only for the stereotypes the novel had created about African-Americans but also because of "the utter disdain of the Tom character by the black community". These writers included Richard Wright with his collection Uncle Tom's Children (1938) and Chester Himes with his 1943 short story "Heaven Has Changed". Ralph Ellison also critiqued

5040-586: Was an English-born American actor and dramatist. He was born in London, came to America when very young, and for several years traveled through the country writing plays and acting them without attaining much reputation. In 1852 he assumed the management of a theatre in St. Louis , Missouri , where he was also later principal owner and an editor of the Reveille , a daily newspaper. At the same time he became widely known for his humorous sketches signed "Straws" in

5112-550: Was sold as a child. Now that their family is together again, they travel to France and eventually Liberia , the African nation created for former American slaves. George Shelby returns to the Kentucky farm, where after his father's death, he frees all his slaves. George Shelby urges them to remember Tom's sacrifice every time they look at his cabin. He decides to lead a pious Christian life just as Uncle Tom did. Uncle Tom's Cabin

5184-536: Was told by runaway slaves in Cincinnati. 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

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