In Fall 2008 I joined the Kent State University English Department as an Assistant Professor of Textual Editing and American Literature. My current project is a scholarly electronic edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Additional detail about my current position will soon be posted on the English Department faculty site.
Until the end of June 2008, I was the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. I worked in the Center for Digital Research in the Humanities. The acronym CLIR stands for Council for Library and Information Resources, an organization that sponsors an annual fellowship program to place humanities and social science scholars with PhDs in libraries.
My work at Nebraska was a project entitled Civil War Washington: Studies in Transformation. We mapped in space and time the life of the city during the war: hospitals, fortifications, theaters, bawdy houses, contraband camps, government buildings, etc. The project is co-directed by Kenneth Price and Kenneth Winkle. My job was to help figure out what to do and how to do it digitally. The project is now in the capable hands of Stacey Berry. For my musings from in virtual library boot camp, see the CLIR portfolio on a separate site.
I came to Nebraska after finishing my degree in English at the University of Virginia in 2006. My dissertation was (and is) a web-based electronic edition of the National Era version of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin. While I considered a career in libraries during the CLIR fellowship, I continued to seek an academic post. Kent State called, and my musings about possible library careers came to an end.
Hi! I have a bound copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin that reads the following on the title page:
UNCLE TOM’S CABIN or, LIFE AMONG THE LOWLY BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE
THREE HUNDRED AND FIFTH THOUSAND
BOSTON
John P. Jewett and Company.
Cleveland, Ohio:
Jewett, Proctor & Worthington.
London: Sampson, Low, Son & Co.
It is dated 1851 and is bound with “Key to Uncle Tom’s Cabin” dated 1853. There is a note on the inside of the front binding cover that reads “Rebound by Walker, Plymouth 1896 June”. It is in relatively good condition.
Comment by Phillip Denby — July 10, 2009 @ 4:19 pm |
Mr. Denby,
That sounds like a nice copy. Sampson Low was Stowe’s British publisher. Their illustrated edition (1853) is the same as Jewett’s illustrated edition (1853). Their paperback copy (like Jewett’s, both 1852/53) is same size as key (both have two columns of type), so they could be issued bound together.
According to BAL, the Key was published by Sampson Low in London and Jewett in U.S. I would suspect that you have a London-issued Key (1853) bound with London-issued paperback edition (1852). The reason it has 1851 is because Stowe claimed copyright in Maine in 1851 while story was running in the serial. I have not seen a title page with 1851 on it (but I have not examined any London-issued copies yet). In any case, the earliest that the UTC copy could have been issued is late 1852.
A Sampson copy may be more rare than a Jewett copy–of course, if title page is missing–the later re-binder may have combined an American-issued UTC with a Britain-issued Key–but WorldCat can be a bit deceptive about the comparative scarcity. Enterprising booksellers claim a lot about scarcity. But I watch eBay and bookfinder.com, and they come up for sale periodically, though seldom in bound sets.
Here’s why I would claim paperback UTC is not extraordinarily rare:
http://wraabe.wordpress.com/2009/02/28/census-of-known-copies-of-uncle-toms-cabin-edition-for-the-million/
The Keys are relatively common. Value, of course, depends on the condition and whether purchaser is interested in both bound together. But every one of these copies of UTC is important for another reason, which I explain here:
http://wraabe.wordpress.com/2008/11/15/the-jewett-paperback-topsys-alternate-route-to-heaven/
If you’d take a gander at pg. 96 of UTC (not Key), I’d love to know whether the passage on Topsy which is identified in that post is also in what is probably your London-issued copy–I would expect it to be.
Thanks,
Wesley
Comment by wraabe — July 10, 2009 @ 5:55 pm |