Uncle Tom's Cabin With Illustrations

London: Tallant and Allen, [i.e. John Cassell], 1852. CRUIKSHANK, George. . Uncle Tom's Cabin. With Illustrations London: Tallant and Allen, [i.e. John Cassell], 1852.

Full Description:

STOWE, Harriet Beecher. [CRUIKSHANK, George, illustrator]. Uncle Tom's Cabin. With Illustrations London: Tallant and Allen, [i.e. John Cassell, n.d.c.a. 1852].

Rare early edition bound from the first English edition parts. With a new title-page with Tallant and Allen as printer, but final leaf with John Cassell printer's imprint and the page of Cassell advertisements. Octavo (7 3/4 x 5 1/4 inches; 200 x 130 mm). xxiii, [1], 391, [1, Cassell (truncated) ads], [4, tipped in Tallant ads]. Cassell's ad page is part of the collation and Tallant's ad leaves are tipped in. With frontispiece portrait of Stowe and 27 engraved plates by Cruikshank. We could find no other copies of this version at auction.

Publisher's full blue morocco-grained cloth. Boards stamped and ruled in blind. Spine elaborately stamped and lettered in gilt. All edges uncut. Boards are rubbed and corners bumped. Boards are crudely reattached to spine. Spine chipped. Newer paste down endpapers. Lacking front free endpaper. Some occasional dampstaining and soiling. Previous owner's signature on blank recto of frontispiece. A good copy of an unusual book.

In a side by side comparison between this copy and the Cassell parts, there were no differences, other than the title-page with the Tallant and Allen imprint.

This hugely successful anti-slavery novel is the only work of fiction listed in Printing and the Mind of Man by Carter and Muir. “In the emotion-charged atmosphere of mid-nineteenth-century America, Uncle Tom’s Cabin exploded like a bombshell. To those engaged in fighting slavery it appeared as an indictment of all the evils inherent in the system they opposed; to the pro-slavery forces it was a slanderous attack on ‘the Southern way of life’. Dramatized versions, exaggerating the cruelties depicted in the novel, appeared almost immediately on the stage adding to the righteous indignation, whether aimed at slavery or at the book’s author, which swept the country. Whatever its weaknesses as a literary work...the social impact of Uncle Tom’s Cabin on the United States was greater than that of any book before or since.” (PMM, 332). This novel was also a huge success in England: “In England the book was hardly less successful than in America.” (PMM, 332).

BAL 19518. Printing and the Mind of Man 332. Hildreth pp. 8-9. Cohn 777.

HBS 69416.

$1,250. (Inventory #: 69416)