Sign-In
Cart
After Uncle Tom's Cabin: Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Quest for Interracial Democracy
Hardcover
Biographies GeneralHistorical FiguresLiterary Figures
Publisher Price: $35.00
ISBN13: 9781324064787
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: Jan 19 2027
Pages: 384
Language: English
Alone among American novels, Uncle Tom's Cabin forever changed the social fabric of the United States. It sold millions of copies, energized abolitionism, and arguably helped spark the Civil War--but the book also remade its author. Nearly overnight, Harriet Beecher Stowe transformed from an obscure writer to a national celebrity and leading antislavery reformer.
After Uncle Tom's Cabin follows Stowe's life after her monumental first novel, highlighting how the Black Americans she met influenced her writing and emboldened her activism. As Stowe learned from her everyday interactions with Black Americans and her relationships with leading figures like Frederick Douglass and Sojourner Truth, Robert S. Levine reveals how her quest for an interracial democracy grew and evolved.
Levine brings to life the more radical Stowe long overlooked by history: the woman who offered her home to enslaved people traveling on the Underground Railroad; who vehemently opposed and defied the Fugitive Slave Act; who made the case for equal rights for Black people; who championed the Civil War as a crusade for human rights; and who attempted to create work with fair pay for Black Floridians. Levine traces how Stowe's writing deepened to depict Black agency, community, and resistance in her second novel, Dred, and how her personal writings and published essays and fiction displayed her growing commitment to racial equality.
Despite ongoing social antagonism and legal obstacles, Stowe acted on her beliefs, from promoting Black employment to founding a school she sought to integrate during her years in post-Civil War Florida. After Uncle Tom's Cabin takes Stowe's most famous novel as the starting point, not the zenith, of a fascinating career, and sheds new light on one of the great writers and social reformers of the nineteenth century.
Also in
Literary Figures
Up from the Depths: Herman Melville, Lewis Mumford, and Rediscovery in Dark Times
Sachs, Aaron
Hardcover
Hidden Hemingway: Inside the Ernest Hemingway Archives of Oak Park
Elder
Vetch, Aaron
Cirino, Mark
Hardcover
Go Deep and Take Plenty of Root: A Prairie-Norwegian Father, Rebellion in Minneapolis, Basement Zen, Growing Up, Growing Tender
Storlie, Erik Fraser
Paperback
Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe
Ogden, Emily
Hardcover
Travels with Charley in Search of America: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
Steinbeck, John
Paperback
The Agatha Christie Cure: What Reading the Queen of Crime Taught Me about Life
Rentzenbrink, Cathy
Hardcover
Plot Twist: Life, Craft, and the Messy First Draft: A Memoir on Writing (Large Print Edition)
Coben, Harlan
Paperback
Eleven Days: The Fascinating True Account of Agatha Christie's Mysterious Disappearance
Thompson, Laura
Hardcover
Jane Austen's Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector's Quest to Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend
Romney, Rebecca
Paperback
Miss Greene's Secret: Based on the True Story of the Black Librarian Who Shaped the Morgan Library
Antona, Nicolas
Hardcover
The Lightning-Bug and the Lightning: Debunking the Myths of Mark Twain, in His Own Words
Dawidziak, Mark
Hardcover
The Village on the Edge of the World: Writing and Surviving in Ceausescu's Romania
Müller, Herta
Hardcover
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
Greenblatt, Stephen
Hardcover
Three by Annie Dillard: The Writing Life, an American Childhood, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Dillard, Annie
Paperback
Somewhere, a Boy and a Bear: A. A. Milne and the Creation of Winnie-The-Pooh
Brandreth, Gyles
Hardcover
The War for Middle-Earth: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis Confront the Gathering Storm, 1933-1945
Loconte, Joseph
Hardcover
The Professor and the Madman: A Tale of Murder, Insanity, and the Making of the Oxford English Dictionary
Winchester, Simon
Paperback
String Theory: David Foster Wallace on Tennis: A Library of America Special Publication
Wallace, David Foster
Hardcover
The Apostle of Tennessee: The Indefatigable Life and Ministry of Father Aloysius Orengo
Pagetta, Joe
Paperback
Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare's Greatest Rival
Greenblatt, Stephen
Paperback
The Making of Middle-Earth: The Worlds of Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings
Snyder, Christopher A.
Hardcover
From Typewriter to Takeoff: The Life of Journalist and Aviatrix Harriet Quimby
Tyler, Norman
Paperback
Everybody Behaves Badly: The True Story Behind Hemingway's Masterpiece the Sun Also Rises
Blume, Lesley M. M.
Paperback
Henry and June: From a Journal of Love: The Unexpurgated Diary (1931-1932) of Anais Nin
Nin, Anaïs
Paperback
Mon Cher Amour: The Love Letters of Albert Camus and Maria Casares, 1944-1959
Camus, Albert
Hardcover