Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution ─ Race, Literacy, Childhood, and Fiction, 1851-1911

Hochman (foreign literatures and linguistics, Ben-Gurion U.) uses contemporary writings, illustrations, and even penciled margin notes to give a fascinating analysis of how the reading of the 19th century's bestselling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, changed over its first fifty years. Wildly popular when it came out, readers found it so moving and gripping, the often read it in a single sitting. It fueled the fires of the abolitionist cause. After the war, however, views on the novel began to change, and by the 1890s and the Jim Crow era, it was regarded differently. Illustrations and abridged versions of the text began to change in ways that de-emphasized the intelligence, literacy, and empathetic qualities of the black characters while playing up racial stereotypes. White readers began to read it as a chronicle of times past while a new audience of black readers read it with increasing interest. Annotation c2011 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Barbara Hochman is professor in the Department of Foreign Literatures and Linguistics at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Israel, and author of Getting at the Author: Reimagining Books and Reading in the Age of American Realism (University of Massachusetts Press).