What if Uncle Tom's Cabin is a better novel than Huckleberry Finn?
This might seem absurd, but surely it merits at least a little thought. Uncle Tom's Cabin was certainly the most widely-read novel of the nineteenth century. It was a huge bestseller in America, to a degree unprecedented before or since, selling 350,000 copies within a few years of publication—whereas The Scarlet Letter perhaps sold around 10,000 and Moby-Dick under 2,000. Thirty years later, Huckleberry Finn would be considered a moderate success with around 50,000 copies sold. But Uncle Tom’s Cabin was also a bestseller in the UK, reportedly selling a million copies within a few years of publication. In serial form, Dickens would have maybe 50,000 subscribers for his books. Uncle Tom’s Cabin dwarfed even Dickens in popularity. The book was also the best-selling novel of the 19th-century in Germany, Italy, Spain, and Latin America, and in France was second only to Les Miserables.
Read Full Article »
