Guide to the Mary C. Schlosser Collection of Harriet Beecher Stowe, 1838-2021 (bulk 1852-1934)

Collection Summary

Biographical Note

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was an American author and abolitionist best known for her divisive and best-selling novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin. She was born on June 14, 1811, in Litchfield, Connecticut, to Roxana Foote Beecher and prominent Calvinist Congregational minister and abolitionist Lyman Beecher. The sixth of eleven children, Stowe's siblings included educator and author Catherine Beecher and preacher and fellow abolitionist Henry Ward Beecher. She received a classical education at Litchfield Female Academy and Hartford Female Seminary, a school run by her older sister Catherine. Stowe taught at Hartford Female Seminary from 1829 to 1832, before relocating with her father to Cincinnati, Ohio, where he had accepted the position of president at Lane Theological Seminary. While at Lane Seminary, Stowe would publish her first book, Primary Geography (1833), and marry Calvin Stowe, a professor at the Seminary. In 1851, the Stowes would move to Brunswick Maine, where Calvin had accepted a teaching position at Bowdoin College.

In 1850, the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act forced states in which slavery was illegal to cooperate in the capture and return of escaped African-Americans back to slavery. This law forced many Northerners, who until that point held passive anti-slavery positions, to become either actively complicit in the enslavement of their neighbors, or active dissidents. Turmoil was especially strong in Cincinnati, a city that existed on the border of the free state of Ohio and the slave state of Kentucky. In part inspired by the Fugitive Slave Act and by increasing unrest in the North, Stowe wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly, a work which condemned the institution of slavery and all of its participants. The book was released in March 1852 and sold 300,000 copies in its first year. By the end of the nineteenth century, it was outsold only by the Bible.

The impact of Uncle Tom's Cabin was widespread and divisive, sparking outrage from the South and becoming the first book to be banned by the Confederate government after the start of the Civil War. Stowe used her and the novel's popularity to tour nationally and internationally to speak about the book and the abolitionist cause. In the decades following the book's publication, more limited copyright laws at the time allowed the novel to be adapted in a variety of ways; from travelling theatrical performances, to translations and abridged editions, to its first motion picture adaptation in 1903.

The first major adaptation of the novel for the stage was produced by the George Howard Company using a script adapted by George Aiken which remained faithful to the novel's abolitionist messaging. Later adaptations, particularly those that toured in Southern states, would be dramatized further and altered to suit the narrative preferences of the audience. In Southern states, the harsh reality of life for enslaved people in the novel would be softened, alternate endings where Tom is happy to remain enslaved were introduced, and the African American characters of the cast would be reduced to grotesque racial caricatures, often portrayed by white actors in blackface. These touring "Tom shows" dominated the U.S. tour market by the 1880s, often featuring parades, bands, and sideshows to draw larger crowds.

In 1863, Stowe and her family relocated to Hartford, Connecticut, where she would live until her death in 1896.

References

Ford, Jane, "The Story of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin' Spread from Novel to Theater and Screen," UVA Today, University of Virginia, 12 November 2012. https://news.virginia.edu/content/story-uncle-tom-s-cabin-spread-novel-theater-and-screen

Patkus, Ronald D. and Mary C. Schlosser, "Aspects of the Publishing History of Uncle Tom's Cabin, 1851-1900," Uncle Tom's Cabin in Print: The Collection of Mary C. Schlosser, Poughkeepsie, N.Y.: Vassar College, 2004. https://www.vassar.edu/specialcollections/exhibit-highlights/2001-2005/stowe/essay2.html

Scope and Content Note

The collection consists of printed ephemera, visual media, sheet music, and a variety of popular culture artifacts and realia related to American author and abolitionist Harriet Beecher Stowe and her most popular and divisive novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, collected by Mary C. Schlosser. The collection contains a variety of material related to stage adaptations of Uncle Tom's Cabin, including advertisements, playbills, programs, posters and illustrated sheet music, as well as actor cards and other memorabilia. Visual media in the collection consists of lantern slides of scenes from the novel, lithograph prints, original paintings, and posters depicting scenes from the novel as well as stage adaptations. The realia portion of the collection contains a wide variety of material culture objects, from card games and toys, to cereal boxes, to pottery and sculpture of scenes and characters from Uncle Tom's Cabin. A small amount of material related to Stowe's second anti-slavery novel Dred: A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp (1856), is also included.

Content Warning

This collection contains a multitude of works derived from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin that were created predominantly in the United States and Great Britain in the years between the American Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. As such, many materials in this collection contain images and language that are racist, xenophobic, or otherwise harmful. The Vassar College Archives and Special Collections Library does not support or condone these depictions, but we believe that they provide important evidence of historical realities that should not be forgotten or ignored.

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Encoded by Emma Gronbeck, May 2024.

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