General for the Series: The Casebooks in Criticism introduce readers to the essential criticism on landmark works of literature and film. For each volume, a distinguished scholar who is an authority on the text has collected the most elucidating and distinctive scholarly essays on that work and added key supporting materials. Each volume includes a substantial introduction which considers the key features of the work, describes its publication history, and contextualizes its cultural import and contemporary reputation while also surveying the major approaches which have informed the works critical history. A condensed bibliography offers suggestions for further reading. The compact volumes provide a critical survey and suggest provocative ways to engage with their texts. They are ideally suited to those interested in developing a deeper understanding of a works history and significance. Specific for this book: Most of the best criticism on Stowe's landmark novel is fairly recent. Until the combined impact of the civil rights and women's movements changed the focus of the academic ciriculum, Uncle Tom's Cabin seldom appeared in classrooms or as the subject of published scholarship. However, from the mid-1970 forward, the book has been widely written about and taught. Today, Uncle Toms Cabin is a stable, important part of the nineteenth-centruy American literature canon and has generated a rich body of new critical work. This casebook collects the best of the new scholarship as well as the most influencial older essays. Included in this volume are letters by Harriet Beecher Stowe and articles by James Baldwin, Leslie Fiedler, Jane Tompkins, Gillian Brown, Robert Stepto, and Elizabeth Ammons.
