Uncle Tom's Cabin

About the Book : Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in two volumes in 1852, the novel had a profound effect on attitudes toward African Americans and slavery in the U.S., and is said to have "helped lay the groundwork for the [American] Civil War. Stowe, a Connecticut-born woman of English descent, was part of the religious Beecher family and an active abolitionist. She wrote the sentimental novel to depict the reality of slavery while also asserting that Christian love could overcome slavery. The novel focuses on the character of Uncle Tom, a long-suffering black slave around whom the stories of the other characters revolve. The book and the plays it inspired helped popularize a number of stereotypes about black people including that of the namesake character "Uncle Tom," with the term now used to describe an excessively subservient person. The negative associations with Uncle Tom's Cabin have, to an extent, overshadowed the historical impact of the book as a "vital antislavery tool". However, the novel stands as a "landmark" in protest literature with later books such as The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson owing a large debt to it.