Harriet Beecher Stowe Securing the Copyright for Uncle Tom's Cabin

HARRIET BEECHER STOWE

Edité par Hartford, CT, 1873

Autograph Letter Signed, to James Osgood, September 23, 1873, Hartford, Connecticut. 1 p., 4 1/2 x 6 in. A brief letter on securing the copyright for Uncle Tom's Cabin and her upcoming reading tour in western cities. Complete Transcript Hartford Sept 23, / 1873Dear Mr Osgood Some time ago I requested you to secure for the copy right of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Has this been attended to? If not pray do not lose a moment in doing so. I am going to start on a reading tour in the West the beginning of October. Truly Yrs H B Stowe Historic BackgroundStowe first published Uncle Tom's Cabin serially from June 1851 to April 1852 in Gamaliel Bailey's antislavery The National Era newspaper in Washington, D.C. John P. Jewett & Company of Boston first published the novel as a book in two volumes with six illustrations in March 1852. The first 5,000 copies sold within days. In mid-April, Jewett announced that "Three paper mills are constantly at work, manufacturing the paper, and three power presses are working twenty-four hours per day, in printing it, and more than one hundred bookbinders are incessantly plying their trade, to bind them, and still it has been impossible as yet to supply the demand." (The National Era (Washington, DC), April 15, 1852, 62:1)A runaway bestseller, the novel sold 300,000 copies in less than a year. As sales began to wane toward the end of 1852, Jewett issued an inexpensive edition, which soon sold. In November, a play based on the book opened in New York, and it became one of the most popular and longest-running works in American theater. (Michael B. Winship, "'The Greatest Book of Its Kind': A Publishing History of 'Uncle Tom's Cabin,'"(Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society 109 (October 1999): 309-317.)In 1854, Phillips, Sampson & Co. of Boston, who had first rejected Uncle Tom's Cabin, became Stowe's publisher, but Jewett's firm had already published enough copies to meet the demand for several years. Jewett's firm failed during the Panic of 1857 and ceased operations in 1860. Their plates were transferred to Ticknor and Fields of Boston, which published a reprint edition in 1862. The book sold fewer than 8,000 copies in the 1860s and roughly 19,500 in the 1870s. In 1878, Ticknor and Fields became Houghton, Osgood & Company. The original copyright, which had run for twenty-eight years, was set to expire in May 1879. After renewal for another fourteen years, Stowe's copyright expired on May 12, 1893. It entered the public domain after being a bestseller for well over fifty years. (Ibid., 322-330.)Stowe's tour of the West began in Reading, Pennsylvania, on September 29, followed by Williamsport, Syracuse, Buffalo, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Indianapolis, Louisville, Terre Haute, St. Louis, Springfield, IL, Bloomington, IL, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia, ending in West Chester, PA on November 1.Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, into the deeply religious and literary family of preacher Lyman Beecher and his first wife Roxana Foote. Harriet was educated at the Hartford Female Academy run by her older sister Catharine Beecher. In 1832, she moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, to join her father who had become president of Lane Theological Seminary. In 1836, she married Lane professor and widower Rev. Calvin Ellis Stowe; they had seven children. In 1850, they moved to Brunswick, Maine, and he taught at Bowdoin College. The Stowes were outspoken critics of slavery and aided fugitive slaves on the Underground Railroad. Her first novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), set publishing records and fueled the debate over abolition and slavery. She published nearly a dozen more novels, a book of poetry and several non-fiction books. In November 1862, she traveled to Washington, D.C., where she met President Abraham Lincoln. After the war, she purchased property near Jacksonville, Florida. In 1868-1869, she served as one o. (See website for full description). N° de réf. du vendeur 27929

Détails bibliographiques

Titre : Harriet Beecher Stowe Securing the Copyright...
Éditeur : Hartford, CT
Date d'édition : 1873
Reliure : No binding
Etat : Very Good
Type de livre : Autograph Letter Signed