Titled after Tom-Mania, the name a British newspaper gave to the international sensation attending the 1852 novel "Uncle Tom s Cabin," this study looks anew at the novel and the songs, plays, sketches, translations, and imitations it inspired. In particular, Sarah Meer shows how the theatrical mode of blackface minstrelsy, the slavery question, and America s emerging cultural identity affected how "Uncle Tom s Cabin" was read, discussed, dramatized, merchandised, and politicized here and abroad.

Until "Uncle Tom s Cabin," Meer says, little truly common ground existed on which the United...