Books

Your best starting place, without question is The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., c2007). This extraordinary resource was edited and annotated by Hollis Robbins, the author of the essay you’ve just read, and Henry Louis Gates, Jr.

While the suggested readings in this edition will take you to most of the books you need, these appeared too late to be included in Robbins’s and Gates’s lists:

Ammons, Elizabeth (Ed.). Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Casebook. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.

An exceptionally helpful volume in the Casebooks in Criticism series, offering a generous collections of essays about the novel from the last 150 years.

Morgan, Jo-Ann. Uncle Tom's Cabin as Visual Culture. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, c2007.

For background on the novel’s author, look at History Now’s September 2005 issue on the Abolition movement, particularly the essay on “Abolition and Antebellum Reform":

/historynow/09_2005/historian.php

and my resource suggestions there:

/historynow/09_2005/ask2b.php

This book focuses directly on reaction to the Fugitive Slave Law:

Campbell, Stanley W. The Slave Catchers: Enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law, 1850-1860. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1970.

These books on Stowe and may be helpful:

Boydston, Jeanne. The Limits of Sisterhood: The Beecher Sisters on Women's Rights and Woman's Sphere. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, c1988.

White, Barbara Anne. The Beecher Sisters. New Haven: Yale University Press, c2003.

Wilson, Robert Forrest. Crusader in Crinoline: The Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott Company, c1941.

For guidance on using Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the classroom, look at:

Ammons, Elizabeth and Susan Belasco (Eds). Approaches to Teaching Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 2000.

Internet Resources

We’re really in luck here. There are two wonderful websites devoted to Harriet Beecher Stowe and her best known novel. They not only have great original resources of their own, but they include up to date links to other materials on the web.

The first is Stephen Railton’s superb “Uncle Tom’s Cabin and American Culture” website on the University of Virginia Website:

http://www.iath.virginia.edu/utc/index2f.html

The basis of the Website, of course is the texts of various editions of the novel, complete with illustrations, as well as Stowe’s Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the book she published in 1855 to answer attacks on the truthfulness of her novel. There is also a fascinating “pre-texts” segment that gives you access to texts or books, broadsides, and pamphlets that anticipated the novel or influenced Stowe. Then you have a generous collection of, responses to the novel from the date of its publication through 1930s, You can go on to children’s books, stage and film versions (including clips from early movies), “tomitudes,” (objects based on the novel’s characters), and songs and music inspired by the novel.

Be sure to look at the lesson plans offered at the site:

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/interpret/lessons/lessonshpf.html

And don’t ignore my personal favorites – the “Interpretive Exhibits” section – a series of first rate essays by scholars in the field, each illustrated by links to images and texts in the Website’s archive. Topics range from Stowe’s life to the history of nineteenth century book publication to film and stage versions of the tale:

http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/utc/interpret/interframe.html

More modest in scope but equally good is the Website for the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford, Connecticut. They provide an excellent essay on Stowe and her work:

http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/life/

Be sure to check the “teachers’ resources”. You’ll find both a wonderful series of documents and essays produced by a Teacher Institute at the Center – wonderful materials on Stowe, the Fugitive Slave Law and abolitionism and slavery in general:

http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/teacher_student

and fine lesson plans:

http://www.harrietbeecherstowecenter.org/teacher_student/lessons/

If you’re lucky enough to be in Connecticut, be sure to visit the Center, housed on the grounds of Stowe’s home in Hartford. I recommend it thoroughly – and if you have time, you can drop in next door to see the much grander home of Stowe’s neighbor, Mark Twain.