These words, said to have been uttered by Abraham Lincoln, signal the celebrity of Uncle Tom`s Cabin. The first American novel to become an international best-seller, Stowe`s novel charts the progress from slavery to freedom of fugitives who escape the chains of American chattel slavery, and of a martyr who transcends all earthly ties. At the middle of the nineteenth-century, the names of its characters - Little Eva, Topsy, Uncle Tom - were renowned. A hundred years later, `Uncle Tom` still had meaning, but, to Blacks everywhere it had become a curse.

This edition firmly locates Uncle Tom`s Cabin within the context of African-American writing, the issues of race and the role of women. Its appendices include the most important contemporary African-American literary responses to the glorification of Uncle Tom`s Christian resignation as well as excerpts from popular slave narratives, quoted by Stowe in her justification of the dramatization of slavery, Key to Uncles Tom`s Cabin.