ABSTRACT
Stowe had taken out a copyright for Uncle Tom’s Cabin before it began to appear in The National Era; this clearly indicates that she intended to publish the work in book form.1 When looking for a publisher, the writer, or her sister Catharine, may have first tried Harper and Brothers. This New York firm, which had published Stowe’s first book, The Mayflower, in 1843, had already issued three of Catharine’s works, and had brought out a work by Charles Beecher, with an introduction by Stowe, in 1849.2 There is no evidence, however, that the proposal was ever actually made.3
