Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution
FAIN: FB-50005-03
Barbara Hochman
Ben Gurion University of the Negev (Beersheva 84105 Israel)
No project description available
Media Coverage
Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution: Race, Literacy, Childhood and Fiction 1851-1911 (Review)
Author(s): C. Johanningsmeier,
Publication: Choice
Date: 12/1/2011
Abstract: Hochman (foreign
literatures and linguistics, Ben-Gurion Univ. of the Negev, Israel) has built on recent scholarship and created something original. Using an impressively wide array of resources, she documents and analyzes how the meaning of Uncle Tom's Cabin changed--for both adult and child readers, black and white--over the course of time. Clearly and concisely charting the interplay of the text of the novel itself, its societal and print contexts, and readers' responses,this volume will undoubtedly serve as a model for future scholars.
Clearly and concisely charting the interplay of the text of the novel itself, its societal and print contexts, and readers' responses, this volume will undoubtedly serve as a model for future scholars. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.
URL: http://www.choicemag.org
How Uncle Tom's Cabin Changed What and Why We Read (Media Coverage)
Author(s): FRANK O SMITH
Publication: Portland Press Herald
Date: 10/9/2011
Abstract: Hochman analyzes the grounds of popularity and the impact of "Uncle TOm's Cabin"in the antebellum period. She attributes the rapid fall from favor of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" after the Civil War to Americans wanting to look forward, not back. Paradoxically, Stowe's book became popular for a time in the 1880s and 1890s among children and grandchildren of former slaves, for it provided them a glimpse of slavery that their parents and grandparents who'd suffered under it didn't wish to revisit.For anyone who loves literature, Hochman's book illuminates the fluidity of attitudes toward a seminal fictional work, literacy and the very act of reading fiction itself.
URL: http://www.pressherald.com/life/audience/how-uncle-toms-cabin-changed-what-and-why-we-read_2011-10-09.html
Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution (Review)
Author(s): Kristina DuRocher
Publication: Journal of American History
Date: 7/16/2012
Abstract: Although it may seem that there is little that remains unexplored about the impact of one of the most famous abolitionist novels, Barbara Hochman’s work on Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) demonstrates the changing role fiction has played in the American reading experience. She examines the appeal that Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel held for diverse audiences—including African Americans, women, and children—before and after the Civil War . . . .Hochman’s strength is in her self-recognized “eclectic sources” that include published and unpublished reader accounts from whites, blacks, and children; scrapbooks; illustrations; forewords; and reviews (p. 6). These sources offer new and interesting ways to view the novel and remind historians that Uncle Tom’s Cabin functioned as a cultural symbol for decades after the Civil War.
Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution (Review)
Author(s):
Publication: Kritikon Litterarum
Date: 3/2/2012
Abstract: "One of the major accomplishments of Barbara Hochman's latest work,"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Reading Revolution, is that her painstaking visual and textual analysis demonstrates beyond a doubt that the form and meaning of a classic novel change over time, very often though deliberate decisions on the part of publishers, illustrators, and other cultural arbiters."
Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution (Review)
Author(s):
Publication: Journal of American Studies
Date: 8/14/2012
Abstract: "In Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution Barbara Hochman provides a thought-provoking, meticulously researched, elegantly written account of the changes in the reception – the transformation in the cultural meaning – of Uncle Tom's Cabin over six decades"
URL: http://jwww.ournals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=8665452
Associated Products
Stowe’s final missed installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era (Blog Post)Title: Stowe’s final missed installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the National Era
Author: Barbara Hochman
Abstract: Stowe missed the deadline for the installment of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that was to appear on December 18, 1851. The reason for the missed deadline is unknown.Stowe had failed to meet her deadline twice before; the missed deadline for the December 18 issue was her last such inadvertency. But perhaps missing the deadline for this particular installment was a tactical decision on Stowe’s part, designed for a particular effect upon her readers. Analysis of the episodes that were published immediately before and after the number of the Era that appeared without an installment of the tale suggests that Stowe purposely missed her deadline in order to intensify the effect of the Christmas installment.
Date: 12/18/2011
Primary URL:
http://nationalera.wordpress.com/2011/12/18/december-18-1851/Primary URL Description: Uncle Tom's Cabin in the National Era
Presented By: The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center-Hartford, CT
Blog Title: Uncle Tom's Cabin in the National Era
Website: Harriet Beecher Stowe Center
Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution: Race, Literacy, Childhood and Fiction 1851-1911 (Book)Title: Uncle Tom's Cabin and the Reading Revolution: Race, Literacy, Childhood and Fiction 1851-1911
Author: Barbara Hochman
Abstract: "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Reading Revolution explores a transformation in the cultural meaning of Stowe’s influential book by addressing changes in reading practices and a shift in widely shared cultural assumptions. These changes reshaped interpretive conventions and generated new meanings for Stowe’s text in the wake of the Civil War.
During the 1850s, men, women, and children avidly devoured Stowe’s novel. White adults wept and could not put the book down, neglecting work and other obligations to complete it. African Americans both celebrated and denounced the book. By the 1890s, readers understood Uncle Tom’s Cabin in new ways. Prefaces and retrospectives celebrated Stowe’s novel as a historical event that led directly to emancipation and national unity. Commentaries played down the evangelical and polemical messages of the book.
Illustrations and children’s editions projected images of entertaining and devoted servants into an open-ended future. In the course of the 1890s, Uncle Tom’s Cabin became both a more viciously racialized book than it had been and a less compelling one. White readers no longer consumed the book at one sitting; Uncle Tom’s Cabin was now more widely known than read. However, in the growing silence surrounding slavery at the turn of the century, Stowe’s book became an increasingly important source of ideas, facts, and images that the children of ex-slaves and other free-black readers could use to make sense of their position in U.S. culture.
Year: 2011
Primary URL:
http://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/uncle-toms-cabin-and-reading-revolutionPrimary URL Description: University of Massachusetts Press website
Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 978-1-55849-8
Prizes
DeLong Book History Prize
Date: 7/30/2012
Organization: Society of the History of Authorship Reading and Publishing
Abstract: SHARP annually awards a $1,000 prize to the author of the best book on any aspect of the creation, dissemination, or uses of script or print published in the previous year. Owing to the generosity of the DeLong family in endowing the prize, from 2004 it has been known as the George A. and Jean S. DeLong Book History Book Prize.