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Are you interested in this item? This item is up for auction at Catawiki. Please click on "respond to advert" (orange button) to get redirected to the Catawiki website. Catawiki’s goal is to make special objects universally available. Our weekly auctions feature thousands of unusual, rare, and exceptional objects you won’t find in just any store. Very rare first Spanish edition of "A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin" by American author Harriet Beecher Stowe (or Mistress Enriqueta Beecher Stowe as translated in the book) from 1855, published only two years after the original English edition came out.
A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was published to document the veracity of the depiction of slavery in Stowe's anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). First published in 1853 by Jewett, Proctor & Worthington, the book also provides insights into Stowe's own views on slavery.
After the publication of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Southerners accused Stowe of misrepresenting slavery. In order to show that she had neither lied about slavery nor exaggerated the plight of enslaved people, she compiled A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin. The book was subtitled "Presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon Which the Story Is Founded, Together with Corroborative Statements Verifying the Truth of the Work".
The reaction of Stowe's contemporaries to A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was very similar to the reaction to Uncle Tom's Cabin, with both very positive and very negative reviews. The responses of abolitionists and Northerners in general were among the positive, lauding the documentation of the evils of slavery and the confirmation of the truth of Uncle Tom's Cabin. The pro-slavery response to the Key paralleled the response to Uncle Tom's Cabin. Despite Stowe's use of documented examples, most Southern reviews still claimed that Stowe was misrepresenting slavery and exaggerating the cruelty of the institution.
Despite the attacks from pro-slavery reviewers, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin sold well: 90,000 copies in the first month, a clear best-seller. 67430311
