2020/04/03 by Susan Ryan · 1 voice
Social Sciences · #Caribbean history, culture, and politics #Colonialism, slavery, and trade #Race, History, and American Society
paper · doi:10.1002/9781119056157.ch45
openalex publication_date 2020/04/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
This chapter examines the literatures of American slavery, with primary attention to the antebellum period, from the 1820s through 1861. While Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) serves as a touchstone, a range of authors and genres are considered, incorporating both proslavery and antislavery positions. Topics include antislavery fiction and non-fiction prior to Stowe's novel, including attention to David Walker's 1829 Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World and Richard Hildreth's 1836 novel, The Slave; a brief critical history of Uncle Tom's Cabin and an account of its many antebellum adaptations and revisions; proslavery thought, from the pseudoscience of race to the paternalistic theories of George Fitzhugh; and proslavery novels written in response to Stowe.