ABSTRACT
Uncle Tom is not only a miracle of itself, but it announces the commencement of a miraculous Era in the literary world. […] Such a phenomenon as its present popularity could have happened only in the present wondrous age. It required all the aid of our new machinery to produce the phenomenon; our steam-presses, steam-ships, steam-carriages, iron roads, electric telegraphs, and universal peace among the reading nations of the earth. But beyond all, it required the readers to consume the books, and these have never before been so numerous …
—Charles Briggs, “Uncle Tomitudes,” Putnam’s Monthly, January 18531
Technological improvements cannot by themselves account for the popularity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Yet new technologies in book manufacturing, added to the improvement of distribution networks, and the increase in the nation’s number of readers did, as Charles Briggs noted, make it possible for the work to become what would later be called a bestseller.2 When Jewett published Uncle Tom’s Cabin, he chose to have the work stereotyped. Manufacturing stereotype plates was almost twice as costly as setting from type, but stereotyping, which had appeared in the United States in the second decade of the nineteenth century, allowed for quick reprints of a book. Because of heavy initial investment, however, stereotyping in the early 1850s was usually reserved for books the publisher deemed likely to sell well.3 Thanks to the flexibility of the process,
century, when The Bookman began printing a monthly list of bestsellers (Alice Payne Hackett, 70 Years of Best Sellers, 1895-1965 (New York, R.R. Bowker, 1967), p. 2.
