Uncle Tom's Cabin, or, Life Among the Lowly

First edition of probably the most socially influential American book ever published. Even before the publication of the serial [in the abolitionist newspaper The National Era] the Boston publisher John P. Jewett had expressed an interest in publishing [it] in book form. The first printing of five thousand copies was exhausted in a few days and a second printing of the same size, indicated by 'ten thousand' on the title-page, was completely disposed of by the end of March. This copy is of the "eightieth thousand" batch of the total number of 150,000 copies of the first edition. The sale of the book was indeed phenomenal. In the emotion-charged atmosphere of mid-nineteenth-century America, Uncle Tom's Cabin exploded like a bombshell [and] the social impact of [the book] on the United States was greater than that of any book before or since." It is said that Lincoln's first words after he met Harriet Beecher Stowe were: "So this is the little lady who made this big war." Though she offered no practical solution to the slavery problem, Mrs. Stowe, with her scenes from Life Among the Lowly, added the fuel of righteous anger to a fire already kindled; it was her misfortune to see it spread until it involved the whole nation in civil war."