Uncle Tom's Cabin made Harriet Beecher Stowe rich and famous
Despite having written more than 30 books during her lifetime (1811–1896), Harriet Beecher Stowe's best-selling anti–slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin is what made her famous around the world and cemented her legacy. Stowe volunteered to write a piece that would "create a word picture of slavery" in 1851 to the editor of the abolitionist newspaper The National Era. Uncle Tom's Cabin ended up having more than 40 installments, when Stowe had only intended to write three or four.
The National Era paid Stowe $300 for 43 chapters, according to Henry Louis Gate Jr.'s preface to the annotated version of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The serial truly took off after Stowe agreed to work with John P. Jewett and Co. to print a two-volume bound book edition before the serial was finished. The book, which was published on March 20, 1852, sold 10,000 copies in the United States in its first week and 300,000 copies in its first year.
In the first year, 1.5 million books in the UK were quickly gone off the shelves. 10 cents from each sale went to Stowe. The London Times said that she had already accumulated $10,000 in royalties. “We believe [that this is] the largest sum of money ever received by any author, either American or European, from the sales of a single work in so short a period of time,” the Times wrote.
