Because of financial difficulties, Tom, a middle-aged slave is sold by his kind master to a unscrupulous trader along with a 5 year old boy. The boy's mother, Eliza, can't bear to lose another child and is determined to escape.... Tom, however, wipes his tears, kisses his wife and children, and is taken down the river towards the deep South...

The excellent characterization. Yes, some of them were a bit stereotypical, but I felt like I knew these characters after having read the book. Stowe brought them to life and have a way of forcing themselves into your mind and heart.

Much of the dialogue is written in slave dialect so it is a bit hard to get through at first until you're used to it.

Cry.

Ashamed of this particular part of my country's past.

A brilliant woman who probably had no idea she would change the course of history with her novel. She was involved in the Underground Railroad and helped many slaves escape to Canada.

As a work of literature it is a must read simply because of the huge impact it had on future American authors. Stowe is said to be the first American realist of consequence and the first to use fiction for a profound criticism of American society. It was also the first American work of fiction to become an international bestseller

When meeting Stowe for the first time, President Lincoln is said to have remarked: “So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great [Civil] war.”

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In 1852 it was published as a book and sold 3,000 copies the first day, 300,000 the first year, within two years sold more than 2,000,000 world wide and was translated into 22 languages. In today's numbers, those figures would have to be multiplied by at least 10 to be comparable. In it's day, it was only outsold by the Bible.

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Created Jun 11, 2003 at 7:41pm • Submit your own review...