Lot
662 
(Printing & Publishing) Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, Cleveland Oh., spectacular Uncle Tom's Cabin, By Harriet Beecher Stowe book illustration corner card on buff cover bearing 3¢ Dull Red (11A) tied by "Cleveland, O., Nov 22" cds to Geneva Oh.; reduced at left slightly into design, some soiling and reverse with toning, Fine and rare. Estimate $750 - 1,000.
A REMARKABLE ILLUSTRATED DESIGN TAKEN FROM THE FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION OF UNCLE TOM'S CABIN.
ONE OF ONLY TWO RECORDED EXAMPLES OF THIS ADVERTISING DESIGN PROMOTING ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL BOOKS PUBLISHED IN THE UNITED STATES.
Harriet Beecher Stowe's best known novel, "Uncle Tom's Cabin" (1852), changed forever how Americans viewed slavery, the system that treated people as property. It demanded that the United States deliver on the promise of freedom and equality, galvanized the abolition movement and contributed to the outbreak of the Civil War.
As a young wife and mother living in Cincinnati, Harriet Beecher Stowe met former and fugitive enslaved people. Cincinnati, then the western frontier of the United States, was an ethnically and culturally vibrant city. On the Ohio River across from Kentucky, a slave state, the city exposed Stowe to the public face of slavery.
Stowe knew about slavery before she moved to Ohio. Her own grandmother kept African American servants who had probably originally been enslaved, and her father had preached in favor of the colonization movement, supporting the creation of Liberia as a settling point for freed people. But in Ohio, Stowe heard first hand stories from former enslaved people; witnessed slavery while visiting Kentucky; and employed fugitives in her home. When Harriet and Calvin learned that their servant was actually a runaway in danger of being returned to slavery, Calvin and Harriet's brother Henry Ward Beecher helped her escape and reach Canada and legal freedom.
The first installment of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" appeared on June 5, 1851 in the anti-slavery newspaper, "The National Era". Stowe enlisted friends and family to send her information and scoured freedom narratives and anti-slavery newspapers for first hand accounts as she composed her story. In 1852 the serial was published as a two volume book. "Uncle Tom's Cabin" was a best seller in the United States, Britain, Europe and Asia with sales of 300,00 in the first year and was translated into over 60 languages.
Realized: $3,250