The Uncle Tom’s Cabin Almanack or Abolitionist Memento. For 1853.

London: John Cassell, 1852. 8vo (24 x 16.5 cm), later half burgundy morocco with marbled paper boards, lacking original wrappers. Frontis. wood engraving, illustrated title-page, 5-70 pp., 20 additional wood engravings; extra-illustrated with 8 wood engravings (one folding) from unidentified sources, along with one tipped-in newspaper clipping, all bound after the almanack; book-plate on front paste-down of James William Ellsworth, a Pennsylvania industrialist and collector; library blind-stamp at upper right corner of title page and one other leaf (confirmed deaccession); circular sticker reading “London, England” at bottom-left of front cover.

A scarce anti-slavery almanac, published in the same year as the first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, consisting of a wide variety of abolitionist texts with vivid illustrations.

Harriet Beecher Stowe’s immediately and immensely popular novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) resulted in a virtual deluge of books, broadsides, and posters, as well as almanacs, as evidenced here. This engaging work is among the earliest such publications, and reflects the popularity of Stowe’s novel in England as well as America. However, it is more an Uncle Tom’s Cabin item in name than in content, consisting mainly of abolitionist texts and illustrations, with relatively few direct references to the novel other than the title and a song entitled Poor Uncle Tom, the Christian Slave. Included here are: a general account of slavery in the United States; an account of the Fugitive Slave Bill, including incidents and cases relating to it; narratives of the lives of Frederick Douglass, William Wells Brown, Josiah Henson, James W. C. Pennington, Lewis Clarke, Henry Garnett, and others; an account of the “Workings of American Slavery”; a section on fugitive settlements in Canada; an account of the slave trade, and so on. Also included is standard almanac material for the year 1853.

Among the subjects illustrated are a statue of Toussaint L’Ouverture; Gezo, King of Dahomey; black orator and abolitionist James W. C. Pennington; the plan of the lower deck of slave ship Brookes under the Regulated Slave Trade Act of 1788; a flight of fugitives to Canada, guided by the North Star; the sale of the young slave, Josiah Henson; Frederick Douglass “the escaped slave, on an English Platform, denouncing slaveholders and their religious abettors”; a scene on the coast of Africa where slaves are being sold by native chiefs; the pursuit of a runaway slave; Frederick Douglass being flogged by Covey, etc. The title-page features an illustration of Lady Liberty embracing three young slaves. Bound into the back are eight illustrations taken from three other sources.

OCLC records numerous institutional holdings, but scarce in trade with just one copy recorded at auction from 1975 to present.

A very interesting use of the popluarity of Uncle Tom’s Cabin to further marshal and reinforce anti-slavery sentiment.

CONDITION: Some wear to edges of covers, along spine and extremities of spine, contents generally very clean, illus. on p. 15 bears light damp-staining, loss at margin of 1 leaf, minor tear to margin of title-page, light wear to bottom to frontis. and title-page.