After Uncle Tom's Cabin

Uncle Tom’s Cabin forever changed the social fabric of the United States. It sold millions of copies, energised abolitionism and arguably helped spark the Civil War–but it also transformed Harriet Beecher Stowe into a national celebrity and leading antislavery reformer nearly overnight.

Robert S. Levine shows how Stowe’s life, writing and activism evolved after her monumental novel, bringing to life a more radical persona long overlooked by history: the woman who offered her home to enslaved people travelling on the Underground Railroad; who vehemently opposed and defied the Fugitive Slave Act; who fought for equal rights for Black people; and who championed the Civil War as a crusade for human rights.

After Uncle Tom’s Cabin takes Stowe’s most famous novel as the beginning, not the zenith, of a fascinating career, and sheds new light on one of the great writers and social reformers of the nineteenth century.

Robert S. Levine’s The Failed Promise was praised as:

• “Fascinating…The Failed Promise looks closely at the perspective of Frederick Douglass and other Black leaders…Levine nimbly narrates the road to Johnson's eventual impeachment.” – Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times
• “The Failed Promise is an important book for anyone on a quest to deeply understand the racism in America's history.” – DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post