Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry Walcott Boynton, Reader's History of American Literature

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[128] I well remember in the latter case the enthusiasm with which the story was read at the North, first appearing in chapters in the National era, then edited in part by Whittier; and that this feeling, beginning with those already convinced of the wrong of slavery, extended itself rapidly to others. The reception of Ramona was as decisively cordial, though on a scale less vast; it indeed reached foreign countries hardly at all.

So purely in the spirit of a tract was Uncle Tom conceived that it is hard for those who do not remember the absorbing interest which its theme at that time possessed, to understand the enthusiasm with which it was received, both here and abroad. It was the famous book of the century. There are now in the British Museum Library fifty-six different editions of Uncle Tom's cabin in English, including abridgments, editions for children, etc., with fifty-four in other languages, including more than twenty different tongues, in some of which there are eight or ten separate versions. Mr. Barwick, one of the leading librarians at the Museum, told me that Thomas a Kempis was perhaps the only author, apart from the Bible writers,