Uncle Tom's Cabin

When it burst onto the literary scene in 1852, Uncle Tom's Cabin galvanized anti-slavery sentiment in America. So much so that when President Lincoln met Harriet Beecher Stowe, he half-jokingly said that she instigated the Civil War. Few books, if any, have been as widely circulated as Unlce Tom's Cabin was when it was first published. And over 100 years later, it remains controversial ... The book engages readers with the compelling adventures of its characters: the deeply religious slave Tom, who is sold "down river" ; the kindly slave owners, the Shelbys, who are forced to sell their slaves to the rapscallion Haley; and the beautiful mulatto slave Eliza, who tries to run to freedom with her son who has been sold. It also gives us one of the most hated characters in all American literature, A man whose name has become synonymous with brutality, Simon Legree. -- back cover