"Uncle Tom's Cabin" and the Reading Revolution: Race, Literacy, Childhood, and Fiction, 1851-1911

6. Imagining the Past as the Future: Illustrating Uncle Tom’s Cabin for the 1890s

L 169 6 imagining the Past as the Future Illustrating uncle tom’s Cabin for the 1890s [Uncle Tom’s Cabin] will always be famous . . . as the most vivid picture of an extinct evil system. —George William Curtis the Stowe display in the Woman’s Building library at the Columbian exposition of 1893 included two american editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin: the first edition, published by John P. Jewett in 1852, and the most recent edition at the time of the fair, published by houghton Mifflin in 1891. this chapter examines the illustrations of these two editions, both issued by Stowe’s publisher , in order to show how changes in visual imagery framed and interpreted Uncle Tom’s Cabin for readers separated by forty turbulent years of social history.1 the “negro problem” intensified in the 1890s. lynching increased in the South and discrimination in the north as Southern blacks began to enter northeastern cities. in 1896, the Supreme Court handed down the influential decision Plessy vs. Ferguson, establishing the legal grounds for separation of the races in schools, buses, and other public areas.2 in this context, Uncle Tom’s Cabin was illustrated for ends quite different from Stowe’s initial purposes, and the new pictures played a significant role in reshaping the meaning of the novel. the 1880s ushered in the golden age of american illustration. newspapers, magazines , books, calendars, self-contained lithographs, and trade cards spread images from coast to coast.3 a rapidly expanding reading public became accustomed to seeing illustrations and eager for more. illustrations helped “literary” journals such as Scribner’s or the Century to court new readers—and even “nonreaders , the ‘illiterate,’” as Robert Scholnick suggests.4 like the literary, historical, and material framing of the novel discussed in Chapter 5, illustrations for new editions of the 1890s firmly situated Uncle 170 K Chapter 6 Tom’s Cabin at a temporal remove from the contemporary united States— especially from its ongoing, unresolved racial problems. although editors and commentators praised Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a significant factor in emancipation , images such as those by the well-known illustrator e. W. Kemble idealized the old South, endorsed the color line, and implied that african americans should remain subservient to white authority. Rendering the antebellum South as colorful and picturesque, Kemble’s images of field hands and domestic servants were informed by nostalgia. Yet Kemble’s illustrations also reflect a generic transformation that made it possible to read Uncle Tom’s Cabin as a kind of realism, an objective rendering of a former social reality. at the same time, his images of slaves had prescriptive implications for african americans at the turn of the century. this chapter begins by analyzing differences between Billings’s illustrations of 1852 and Kemble’s illustrations of 1891; it ends by considering the visual materials in another carefully produced, high-end edition, issued by appleton in 1898 with an introduction by thomas Wentworth higginson. higginson was exceptional among commentators of the period in suggesting that Uncle Tom’s Cabin had begun—but not completed—the difficult task of eliminating racial injustice in the united States. however, in keeping with widely shared interpretive conventions, his introduction, like the illustrations that accompany this well-made full-length edition, tones down the disruptive potential of Uncle Tom’s Cabin for turn-of-the-century america. the two american editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin in the bookcase of the Woman’s Building library at the Columbian exposition epitomized the cultural significance of Stowe’s book for the united States. the Stowe display, as we have seen, celebrated Uncle Tom’s Cabin for its contribution to america’s coming of age, its role in the narrative of progress promoted by the fair.5 however, a closer look at the illustrated american editions exhibited will help us see how Stowe’s abolitionist text came to serve the cause of segregation and the ongoing subordination of african americans. Uncle Tom’s Cabin without Black Literacy descriptions of the Stowe display in the Woman’s Building library repeatedly mention the two american editions of Uncle Tom’s Cabin included in the collec- L 171 19. “Eliza comes to tell Uncle Tom that he is sold.” From Harriet Beecher Stowe, uncle tom’s Cabin. Boston: John P. Jewett, 1852. Collection of The New-York Historical Society. Negative #83641d. 20. “The Freeman’s Defense.” From Harriet...