1852
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN
Selling 300,000 in its first year in the US, and 1.5 million copies in Britain in one year, according to the Harriet Beecher Stowe was one of the 19th century’s most popular books. Stowe originally intended to write a handful of instalments for an anti-slavery newspaper, before the story grew. Stowe collected first-hand accounts of slavery. The book remains controversial, but without the Underground Railroad, this impactful but divisive work of literature would never have been written.
