Talk:Anti-Tom literature

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An entry from Anti-Tom literature appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on 5 August 2005.

The article calls Uncle Tom's Cabin "the best-selling novel of the 19th century". Is this meant to be worldwide or was Uncle Tom's Cabin just the best-selling American novel? I can't find a similar claim in the Uncle Tom's Cabin; what's the source for this? Thanks for clearing this up.--Pharos 01:37, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

It was the best selling novel in the world in the 19th century. This information is stated in numerous locations, including the second reference at the bottom of the article: "Caroline Lee Hentz's Long Journey" by Philip D. Beidler. Alabama Heritage Number 75, Winter 2005. Here is the section that states this: "In 1850 Nathaniel Hawthorne kicked off a decade of saleable domestic melodrama with the controversial Scarlet Letter. The book was quickly eclipsed only a year later, however, by Susan Warner's The Wide, Wide World. (It is frequently forgotten that, with the exception of Harriet Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin, Warner's book was the best-selling American novel of the nineteenth century.)"

Okay, technically, that reference is to the American domestic audience. However, there are others, such as [1] and [2]. The second reference says, "It was to become the second best-selling book in the world during the nineteenth century, second only to the Bible." Thanks for pointing out that this info wasn't in the Uncle Tom's Cabin article. I have now added it.--Alabamaboy 01:53, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming that; it's a pretty striking aspect of the book's history that I'm surprised wasn't in its article before.--Pharos 02:17, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

Why do people claim that slaves were African Americans? President Abraham Lincoln asked Congress for money to pay slaveowners "for the loss of their property." Slaves were captives. Slaves were a commodity. Slaves were bought and sold. Please cease corrupting history. 141.151.176.221 00:43, 6 August 2005 (UTC)

Two points. One, it seems to me that "without literary merit" is POV, I've tweaked it a bit. Also, I would believe that some slave narratives were a response to anti-Tom novels, but it seems to me that the genre actually predates anti-Tom writing, so I don't see how the whole genre can be described as a response. Is there some citation for this? Ethan Mitchell 23:54, 28 August 2006 (UTC)