20 h 56 minAudiobook16 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does kindness mean when a debt can tear a family apart?
On a Kentucky farm, Mr. Shelby needs to pay his debts, and other people's lives become his bargaining chips. Tom, a kind, devout man, is sold away from his wife and children. Eliza Harris takes her small son, Harry, and runs north rather than let him be sold.
In Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Harriet Beecher Stowe follows these divided paths through a world of traders, families, preachers and children. In New Orleans, Augustine St. Clare sees slavery's wrong but fails to act. Through him and others, Stowe asks whether sympathy means anything without responsibility—and whether any family is safe under slavery.
What you’ll discover
- A mother's urgent choice Follow Eliza toward the Ohio River as she struggles to keep her child beside her.
- Tom's steady faith Meet a man who holds to his beliefs while slavery separates him from those he loves.
- Kindness without protection See why a kind owner offers no lasting safety when the law permits people to be sold.
- A household of contradictions Enter the St. Clare home, where affection, prejudice and inaction reveal the distance between feeling and doing.
- Fiction that confronts Experience Stowe's blend of adventure, melodrama and direct appeal as she challenges readers to examine their responsibilities.
Is it for you?
This is for readers who want to understand the book that shaped American arguments over slavery, and for anyone curious about how fiction can move public opinion. It may suit you less if you want a quiet, modern, restrained style.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A Kentucky debt puts two lives on sale
- A mother runs for the river with her child
- Tom is sold and sent down the river
- In New Orleans, a divided household shows the system's flaws
- Kindness depends on luck, not on law
- Faith is the book's moral force
- Stowe speaks straight to the reader
- A novel that shook a nation in 1852
- How readers have judged the book since
Who’s who
- Uncle TomA devout, steady man who is sold away from his family and holds to his faith through every trial.
- Eliza HarrisA young mother who runs north with her small son to keep him from being sold.
- George HarrisEliza's proud, clever husband, who is angered by his treatment and seeks freedom for his family.
- Eva St. ClareA gentle, thoughtful child who befriends Tom and sees the people in her father's house as her friends.
- Augustine St. ClareA wealthy New Orleans man who sees slavery's wrong but cannot bring himself to act against it.
- Miss OpheliaA proper Vermont woman who opposes slavery in theory and must learn to treat those she helps with real warmth.
- TopsyA wild, defiant young girl, badly treated before she comes to the St. Clare house, who tests every attempt to teach her.
- Mr. ShelbyA Kentucky farm owner who means well but sells people to pay his debts.
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- 15-minute summary
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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La Case de l’oncle Tom
by Harriet Beecher Stowe· 1852
Slavery separates families as Tom is sold and Eliza flees.
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Language: Français
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 9
A Kentucky debt puts two lives on sale
The story opens in Kentucky, in the comfortable parlor of Mr. Shelby, a farm owner who is in debt. He sits over wine with a slave trader named Haley, and the two men talk business as if they were discussing horses. Shelby owns a man called Tom, whom he trusts with money and with his whole farm. Haley wants Tom, and he also wants a small boy named Harry, the young son of a woman called Eliza.
Stowe is careful to show that Shelby is not a monster. He is a gentle master by the standards of his world, and his wife Emily is even more troubled by what is being planned. Yet he sees no way out of his debts except to sell people. This is one of the book's first lessons. Good manners at the dinner table do not change what the law allows one man to do to another.
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The author
Harriet Beecher Stowe
1811–1896 · American novelist and abolitionist
Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American author and abolitionist, born in Litchfield, Connecticut, in 1811. She lived in Cincinnati, Ohio, and later in Connecticut. She wrote Uncle Tom’s Cabin, published in 1852, and co-wrote The American Woman’s Home with her sister Catharine Beecher in 1869. She died in Hartford in 1896.
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What is Uncle Tom's Cabin about?
It tells of enslaved people in the American South in the years before the Civil War. A devout man named Tom is sold away from his family, while a young mother named Eliza runs north with her child.
Is Uncle Tom's Cabin a true story?
No, it is a novel, but Stowe drew on accounts of slavery, newspapers and court cases. She published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1853 to show the sources behind her story. It was first published in 1851 and 1852.
Why did Harriet Beecher Stowe write Uncle Tom's Cabin?
She was angered by the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which forced citizens of free states to help return people who had escaped. She wanted to show readers, especially Northern Christians, what slavery did to families.
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