The first American novel to become an international best-seller, Stowe's book charts the progress from slavery, and of a martyr who transcends all earthly ties. In 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.

Its appendices include excerpts from Stowe’s compilation of her sources in slave narratives, the key to ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’, as well as Frederick Douglass’s story celebrating the victorious leader of a slave revolt, his literary response to Stowe’s model of black martyrdom.