Uncle Tom’s Cabin, edited by Christopher G. Diller, Broadview Press (2009).  $15.95

Every year sees the republication of Stowe’s first and most famous novel.  This edition, however, is unique: in addition to reprinting all of the prefaces that Stowe wrote for authorized European republications of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, this Broadview edition gathers a remarkably diverse range of primary materials that shed light on the development and unprecedented reception of Stowe’s controversial text.  The volume’s appendices include the original illustrations that accompanied the first American edition of the novel; abolitionist, colonizationist, and proslavery views on slavery; letters that Stowe wrote before and just after the publication of her novel; the full text of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; American responses to the novel (including those of abolitionist, African American, proslavery, and Southern readers); European reviews (including three previously untranslated foreign language reviews); and a gallery of visual images that recapture how Uncle Tom’s Cabin was reproduced both on stage and in film.  With an introduction that preserves the dramatic suspense of Stowe’s text and over 400 footnotes that clarify biblical and other cultural allusions, this is an edition designed for academic and general readers alike.

Christopher G. Diller is an associate professor in the department of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at Berry College.