The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe

The Cambridge Companion to Harriet Beecher Stowe establishes new parameters for both scholarly and classroom discussion of Beecher Stowe\'s writing and life. This collection of specially commissioned essays provides new perspectives on the frequently read classic Uncle Tom’s Cabin, as well as on topics of perennial interest, such as Stowe’s representation of race, her attitude to reform, and her relationship to the American novel. The volume investigates Stowe’s impact on the American literary tradition and the novel of social change. Contributions also offer lucid and provocative readings that analyze Stowe\'s writings through a variety of contexts, including antebellum reform, regionalism, law and the protest novel. Fresh, accessible, and engaged, this is the most up to date introduction available to Stowe’s work. The volume, which offers a comprehensive chronology of Stowe\'s life and a helpful guide to further reading, will be of interest to students and teachers alike.

• Essays that shed new light on all aspects of Stowe’s writing and life • Offers new and lucid readings of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which will be of interest to students and specialists alike • Introduction to the widely taught work of one of the most important American writers of the nineteenth century

Chronology; Introduction Cindy Weinstein; 1. Stowe and race Samuel Otter; 2. The south reads Stowe Cindy Weinstein; 3. Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the American renaissance: the sacramental aesthetic of Harriet Beecher Stowe Michael Gilmore; 4. Reading and children: Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the Pearl of Orr’s Island Gillian Brown; 5. Uncle Tom and Harriet Beecher Stowe in England Audrey Fisch; 6. Staging Black insurrection: Dred on stage Judie Newman; 7. Stowe and regionalism Marjorie Pryse; 8. Stowe and the law Gregg Crane; 9. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the American reform tradition Ronald Walters; 10. Harriet Beecher Stowe and the dream of the great American novel Lawrence Buell; 11. Stowe and the literature of social change Carolyn Karcher; 12. The afterlife of Uncle Tom’s Cabin Kenneth Warren; Selected bibliography.