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Boston's Crusade Against Slavery

Photograph

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) Pictures and stories from Uncle Tom’s cabin (Boston, 1853)

Photograph

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) Pictures and stories from Uncle Tom’s cabin (Boston, 1853)

With the publication of her wildly popular novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), Stowe became one of the most famous female abolitionists in the country. This juvenile edition was designed to be shared between child and parent, coupling pictures and rhymed poems for children with prose sections to be read by the adult. This scene highlights the unequal agency of white and black women. Topsy, with no access to education, is described as ignorant, while little Eva through her idealized girlhood becomes an angelic petitioner for forgiveness. Displayed with a carte-de-visite of Stowe.

Book: AL 3527.447* – Bequest of Evert Jansen Wendell, 1918. Carte-de-visite: Portrait file, S – No source, no date.