310

Pre-publication notice of Uncle Tom's Cabin in an issue of The National Era.

Washington, 8 May 1851
4 pages, 27 x 19 inches; minor foxing, folds, subscriber's name H. Bass of Wauconda, IL written above masthead; uncut.

19th-century newspapers and magazines often contained serialized novels, most of them of no great lasting significance. The reader of this Washington daily might be forgiven for glossing over this page 2 announcement of a new serial by a moderately-known author:

"Week after next we propose to commence in the Era, the publication of a new story by Mrs. H. B. Stowe, the title of which will be, 'Uncle Tom's Cabin, or The Man That Was a Thing'. It will probably be of the length of the Tale by Mrs. Southworth, entitled Retribution. Mrs. Stowe is one of the most gifted and popular of American writers. We announce her story in advance, that none of our subscribers may lose the beginning of it, and that those who desire to read the production as it may appear in successive numbers of the Era, may send us their names in season."

Note the long-forgotten original title for the book: "The Man That Was a Thing." The first installment appeared in the National Era on 5 June, and ran through the following April. In book form, it became the best-selling American novel of the century, and probably no work of fiction ever had as great an impact on American history.

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