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''Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly'', is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, the novel "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War", according to Will Kaufman.〔Will Kaufman, ''The Civil War in American Culture'', Edinburgh University Press, 2006, p. 18.〕 Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, featured the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of other characters revolve. The sentimental novel depicts the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love can overcome something as destructive as enslavement of fellow human beings.〔''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' by Harriet Beecher Stowe, Spark Publishers, 2002, p. 19, states the novel is about the "destructive power of slavery and the ability of Christian love to overcome it..."〕〔Laurie E. Rozakis, ''The Complete Idiot's Guide to American Literature'', Alpha Books, 1999, p. 125, says one of the book's main messages is that "The slavery crisis can only be resolved by Christian love."〕〔Deborah C. de Rosa, ''Domestic Abolitionism and Juvenile Literature, 1830–1865'', SUNY Press, 2003, p. 121. De Rosa quotes Jane Tompkins that Stowe's strategy was to destroy slavery through the "saving power of Christian love." This quote is from ("Sentimental Power: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Politics of Literary History" ) by Jane Tompkins, from ''In Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction'', 1790–1860. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. pp. 122–146. In that essay, Tompkins also writes: "Stowe conceived her book as an instrument for bringing about the day when the world would be ruled not by force, but by Christian love."〕 ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' was the best-selling novel of the 19th century and the second best-selling book of that century, following the Bible.〔"The Sentimental Novel: The Example of Harriet Beecher Stowe" by Gail K. Smith, ''The Cambridge Companion to Nineteenth-Century American Women's Writing'' by Dale M. Bauer and Philip Gould, Cambridge University Press, 2001, p. 221.〕 It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s.〔Goldner, Ellen J. "Arguing with Pictures: Race, Class and the Formation of Popular Abolitionism Through Uncle Tom's Cabin." ''Journal of American & Comparative Cultures'' 2001 24(1–2): 71–84. Fulltext: online at Ebsco.〕 In the first year after it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold in the United States; one million copies in Great Britain.〔Geoffrey Wheatcroft, "The Cousins' War: review of Amanda Foreman, 'A World on Fire'", ''New York Times Book Review,'' July 3, 2011, p. 1〕 In 1855, three years after it was published, it was called "the most popular novel of our day."〔Everon, Ernest. "Some Thoughts Anent Dickens and Novel Writing" ''The Ladies' Companion and Monthly Magazine'' London, 1855 Volume VII Second Series:259.〕 The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."〔Charles Edward Stowe, ''Harriet Beecher Stowe: The Story of Her Life'' (1911) p. 203.〕 The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has been argued that "The long-term durability of Lincoln's greeting as an anecdote in literary studies and Stowe scholarship can perhaps be explained in part by the desire among many contemporary intellectuals ... to affirm the role of literature as an agent of social change." The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people.〔Hulser, Kathleen. "Reading Uncle Tom's Image: From Anti-slavery Hero to Racial Insult." ''New-York Journal of American History'' 2003 65(1): 75–79. .〕 These include the affectionate, dark-skinned "mammy"; the "pickaninny" stereotype of black children; and the "Uncle Tom", or dutiful, long-suffering servant faithful to his white master or mistress. In recent years, the negative associations with ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool."〔Henry Louis Gates, Kwame Anthony Appiah, ''Africana: Arts and Letters: An A-to-Z Reference of Writers, Musicians, and Artists of the African American Experience,'' Running Press, 2005, p. 544.〕 ==Sources== Stowe, a Connecticut-born teacher at the Hartford Female Seminary and an active abolitionist, wrote the novel as a response to the passage, in 1850, of the second Fugitive Slave Act. Much of the book was composed in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband, Calvin Ellis Stowe, taught at his alma mater, Bowdoin College. Stowe was partly inspired to create ''Uncle Tom's Cabin'' by the slave narrative ''The Life of Josiah Henson, Formerly a Slave, Now an Inhabitant of Canada, as Narrated by Himself'' (1849). Henson, a formerly enslaved black man, had lived and worked on a tobacco plantation in North Bethesda, Maryland, owned by Isaac Riley.〔Susan Logue, ("Historic Uncle Tom's Cabin Saved" ), VOA News, January 12, 2006. Retrieved December 24, 2011.〕 Henson escaped slavery in 1830 by fleeing to the Province of Upper Canada (now Ontario), where he helped other fugitive slaves settle and become self-sufficient, and where he wrote his memoirs. Stowe acknowledged in 1853 that Henson's writings inspired ''Uncle Tom's Cabin''.〔Harriet Beecher Stowe, (''A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'' ) 1853, p. 42, in which Stowe states: "A last instance parallel with that of Uncle Tom is to be found in the published memoirs of the venerable Josiah Henson]..." This also is cited in Debra J. Rosenthal, ''A Routledge Literary Sourcebook on Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin'', Routledge, 2003, pp. 25–26.〕 When Stowe's work became a best-seller, Henson republished his memoirs as ''The Memoirs of Uncle Tom'' and traveled on lecture tours extensively in the United States and Europe.〔 Stowe's novel lent its name to Henson's home—Uncle Tom's Cabin Historic Site, near Dresden, Canada—which since the 1940s has been a museum. The cabin where Henson lived while he was enslaved no longer exists, but a cabin on the Riley farm erroneously thought to be the Henson Cabin was purchased by the Montgomery County, Maryland, government in 2006.〔Annys Shin, ("After buying historic home, Md. officials find it wasn't really Uncle Tom's Cabin" ), ''Washington Post'', October 3, 2010.〕 It is now a part of the National Park Service National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom program,〔(Official Montgomery Parks Josiah Henson Park site )〕 and plans are underway to build a museum and interpretive center on the site. ''American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses'', a volume co-authored by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters, is also a source of some of the novel's content.〔The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition, 2001–2005.〕 Stowe said she based the novel on a number of interviews with people who escaped slavery during the time when she was living in Cincinnati, Ohio, across the Ohio River from Kentucky, a slave state. In Cincinnati the Underground Railroad had local abolitionist sympathizers and was active in efforts to help runaway slaves on their escape route from the South. Stowe mentioned a number of the inspirations and sources for her novel in ''A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin'' (1853). This non-fiction book was intended to verify Stowe's claims about slavery.〔(A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin ), Uncle Tom's Cabin and American Culture, a Multi-Media Archive. Retrieved April 20, 2007.〕 However, later research indicated that Stowe did not read many of the book's cited works until after she had published her novel.〔 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Uncle Tom's Cabin」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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