Q 01/05

Who wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin?

A) Louisa May Alcott

B) Frances Harper

C) Harriet Jacobs

D) Harriet Beecher Stowe

Answer · why

D) Harriet Beecher Stowe

She was a Connecticut-born teacher from the famous Beecher family of preachers and reformers.

Q 02/05

In which year was Uncle Tom's Cabin published in book form?

A) 1842

B) 1852

C) 1859

D) 1865

Answer · why

B) 1852

It appeared in two volumes on 20 March and sold 3,000 copies that day alone.

Q 03/05

What is the novel's subtitle?

A) Life Among the Lowly

B) Or, The Fugitive

C) Scenes of Slavery

D) A Tale of the South

Answer · why

A) Life Among the Lowly

Stowe wrote it in response to a federal law passed in 1850 that forced Northerners to help return escaped slaves.

Q 04/05

The passage of which law in 1850 prompted Stowe to write the novel?

A) The Missouri Compromise

B) The Kansas-Nebraska Act

C) The Fugitive Slave Act

D) The Dred Scott ruling

Answer · why

C) The Fugitive Slave Act

Much of the book was written at her home in Brunswick, Maine, where her husband taught at Bowdoin College.

Q 05/05

In which abolitionist periodical was the novel first serialised over 40 weeks?

A) The National Era

B) The Atlantic Monthly

C) Frederick Douglass' Paper

D) The Liberator

Answer · why

A) The National Era

Readers protested to the office when she missed an issue; the final instalment ran on 1 April the following year.