Uncle Tom: From Martyr to Traitor – Adena Spingarn
NF/NF

For sale: a Rare and Exceptional first edition, first printing hardcover copy of Uncle Tom: From Martyr to Traitor by Adena Spingarn in a new archival wrap. First Edition unstated, 2018 Stanford University Press. First Printing with no subsequent printing.

The book is in Near Fine condition with spotless boards, strong title ink on the straight spine, clean page blocks, tight binding, mild spine tilt, lightly rolled spine ends, mild edge wear, and strong corners. The interior of the book is in Near Fine condition with the ghost of an erased price on the first free end paper. No other marks, inscriptions or signs of ownership inside. The end papers and the interior pages are clean and bright, making it an excellent addition to any collection.

The dust jacket is in Near Fine condition with a bar code but no price and mild surface and edge wear. Looks great in a new Brodart archival wrap.

Uncle Tom charts the dramatic cultural transformation of perhaps the most controversial literary character in American history. From his origins as the heroic, Christ-like protagonist of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s anti-slavery novel, the best-selling book of the nineteenth century after the Bible, Uncle Tom has become a widely recognized epithet for a black person deemed so subservient to whites that he betrays his race. Readers have long noted that Stowe’s character is not the traitorous sycophant that his name connotes today. Adena Spingarn traces his evolution in the American imagination, offering the first comprehensive account of a figure central to American conversations about race and racial representation from 1852 to the present.

Ships promptly in a corrugated mailer with book wrapped in both craft paper and multiple layers of bubble wrap.