Existing comment:
Henson and Uncle Tom's Cabin
The same year that Henson published his narrative, 1849, Harriet Beecher Stowe began work on Uncle Tom's Cabin, a fictional account of slavery, releasing it one chapter at a time. As she later noted in her A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), her sources included personal interviews and observations as well as written accounts. In the Key, she revealed that "the venerable Josiah Henson" who was "'raised' in the State of Maryland" was one of the inspirations for the character Uncle Tom. Later, Stowe wrote the preface to the 1858 version of Henson's expanded narrative. |