Note on the Text

Uncle Tom's Cabin; Or Life Among the Lonely was first published serially in the abolitionist weekly The National Era, from 1851-52. The story proved to be instantly popular and Boston publisher John P. Jewett & Co. contacted Stowe to turn the work into a book. Confident the book would be a success, Jewett made the unusual decision to have six full-page illustrations engraved for the first edition. The text of this ebook edition is based on Project Gutenberg files and scans of the first edition available on Archive.Org. Sources for documents in "Background and Context" are individually listed there.

This edition Uncle Tom's Cabin was prepared for students at the City University of New York. It is offered under a Creative Commons license under which the edition may freely read, shared, and edited. While every effort has been made to ensure that the text is reproduced faithfully, this edition is no substitute for an authoritative edition.