Uncle Tom's cabin; or, life among the lowly
“Make this whole nation feel
what an accursed thing slavery is”
Ex-coll. a prominent New Hampshire abolitionist
Two volumes. Hobart and Robbins for Boston: John P. Jewett & Company and Cleveland: Jewett, Proctor & Worthington; 1852. First edition in book form, first issue.
Duodecimo in 6s (7 ½” x 4 5/8”, 191mm x 119mm).
Vol. I: binder’s blank, 16(–11 and 16) 2-266, binder’s blank [$2 signed (first and third as “#*”)]. 154 leaves, pp. [3] (title, copyright, preface) vi-x, 13 14-312. [=viii, 300] With 3 wood-engraved plates by W.J. Baker after Hammatt Billings.
Vol. II: binder’s blank, 1-276 (276 blank) [$2 signed (first and third as “#*”); –11]. 162 leaves, pp. i-iii (title, copyright, contents) iv, 5 6-322 [2] (2 blanks). With 3 wood-engraved plates by W.J. Baker after Hammatt Billings.
With 6 wood-engraved plates in toto.
Bound in the publisher’s brown cloth, blocked in blind and, at the center of the front board of each volume, gilt. On the spine, title, author, number and publisher gilt among bling ornaments. With two photographic portraits of the author: one a silver-gelatin print mounted to maroon card (122mm x 87mm) and the other a carte-de-visite of Hastings of Boston (166mm x 107mm) with Stowe’s signature below. Presented in a sheep-backed slip-case (the upper section missing) with a chemise.
Re-cased (imperceptibly, but noted in graphite to the recto of the front free end-paper of vol. I, with some quires consequently proud). Fraying at the heads and tails, with some rubbing generally and wear at the fore-corners. A small (~8mm) chip to the rear hinge of vol. I. Mildly and evenly tanned throughout, with a few passages of foxing. Damp-stain to the fore edge from I.244 through the end. An old repair to a transverse tear to I.166 (pp. 191–192). Graphite ownership signature of Asa Fowler to the recto of the front free end-paper of vol. II.
Of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s (1811–1896) great cry against slavery, Printing and the Mind of Man claims “the social impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the United States was greater than that of any book before or since.” Born to a prominent family of Yankee Calvinists, Stowe moved in 1832 to Cincinnati, where her father had been appointed president of the Lane Theological Seminary, site of the Lane Debates on slavery in February 1834. Just over the Ohio River from Kentucky, Stowe witnessed the exodus of enslaved people and learned first-hand of the conditions of slavery.
The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which authorized the pursuit, capture and re-enslavement of those who managed to escape oppression, roused in Stowe frustration at the apathy and hypocrisy of northerners. In June 1851 she — urged in a letter by her brother Edward’s wife Isabella Jones Beecher: “if I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that would make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is” (apud Hedrick, 207) — published the first instalment of the novel in The National Era, an abolitionist newspaper. The serialization ended 1 April 1852 and on 20 March (i.e., 12 days before the final instalment) Jewett issued the first printing in two volumes; the present set is one of five-thousand issued that day. The Bibliography of American Literature notes three binding variants of the first issue (distinguished by several points, but principally by mention of the stereotyping firm of Hobart and Robbins on the verso of the title-pages and without any mention of later printings on the title-pages) without precedence: wrappers (A, $1), brown cloth gilt (B, $1.50) and deluxe blue cloth gilt (C, $2). By the end of the year, some 300,000 copies had been sold in America.
Uncle Tom’s Cabin takes as its namesake an enslaved African-American who preaches Christian nonviolence and acceptance of suffering — a Jesus-like martyr who will suffer the lash of Simon Legree — a radical reimagining of extant slave-narratives. The title character quickly became a catchword for race-traitorship: a lack of solidarity, a higher standard of behavior and an internalized sense of desert of suffering. Indeed, Uncle Tom was subsumed into minstrel-show practice in the South, with the result that the staunchly abolitionist book was used also by advocated of enslavement. The (doubtless) apocryphal meeting of President Lincoln with Stowe, at which he credited her with initiating the Civil War, demonstrates not only the book’s reach but its complexity, despite accusations of over-simplicity and melodrama.
Asa Fowler (1811–1885) was a justice of the New Hampshire Supreme Court and a member of the New Hampshire House of Representatives; he would go on to be its speaker in 1872. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1833 and in 1838 was in legal partnership with Franklin Pierce, who in 1853 was elected president. In 1855, Fowler was the candidate for governor from the Free Soil Party, whose principal aim was to suppress the spread of slavery into the new western territories following the 1846–1848 Mexican War. Auction slips laid in confirm the set was lot 723 in the American Art Association Auction of 15 January 1926, at which point the two photographic portraits had already been presented with the book.
BAL 19343B; PMM 332.
Item #JLR0871
Price: $18,000