Uncle Tom's Cabin Published as Novel
Harriet Beecher Stowe, an American author and abolitionist, had serialized her antislavery story in the National Era newspaper starting in 1851. Drawing on real accounts of enslaved people's experiences and the Fugitive Slave Act's injustices, she crafted a narrative centered on the devout slave Uncle Tom and other characters facing separation and cruelty. On March 20, 1852, the complete novel appeared in book form from Boston publisher John P. Jewett. It sold hundreds of thousands of copies rapidly in the United States and Britain, becoming a publishing phenomenon second only to the Bible in popularity at the time. The work humanized the suffering under slavery for Northern readers previously ambivalent about the institution.