Uncle Tom's Cabin

It is the best known book about American slavery, and was so incendiary upon its first publication in 1852 that it actually ignited the social flames that led to Civil War less than a decade later. What began as a series of sketches for the Cincinnati abolitionist newspaper The National Era scandalized the North, was banned in the South, and ultimately became the bestselling novel of the 19th century.

Today, controversy over this melodramatic tale of the dignified slave Tom, the brutal plant...