Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Published in 1852, and "helped lay the groundwork for the Civil War" Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century .It is credited with helping fuel the abolitionist cause in the 1850s. The impact attributed to the book is great, reinforced by a story that when Abraham Lincoln met Stowe at the start of the Civil War, Lincoln declared, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."The quote is apocryphal; it did not appear in print until 1896, and it has...

To commemorate the 150th Anniversary of the end of the Civil War, Diversion Books is publishing seminal works of the era: stories told by the men and women who led, who fought, and who lived in an America that had come apart at the seams.

Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel has understandably grown in stature since its publication, now viewed as one of the most powerful and effecting works of the era to changing public opinion on slavery. As mesmerizing today as when it was published (and became the bestselling novel of the 19th century), the characters Eliza and George, Simon Legree, Little...