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Except for the Bible, Uncle Tom´s Cabin, by Harriet Beecher Stowe, was the largest selling book during the nineteenth century. Modern emotion theorists have produced extensive scholarship exploring the ways in which Uncle Tom´s Cabin functioned within antebellum America, and the ways in which it changed the American slavery debate. Applying emotion theory, James Roller explains how Stowe´s family history and regional location contributed to her ability to address a variety of audiences with her novel. He describes how Uncle Tom´s Cabin employs many rhetorical strategies from American antislavery writing, and examines the ways in which the text was received in American society with a particular emphasis on the book´s contemporary reviews. Finally, he discusses the ways in which Stowe´s approach to writing changed in the aftermath of the novel´s release, and the drastic transformation it made in her life.

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James Roller teaches College Composition and his interests focus on early and antebellum American literature as viewed through historical context and culturally constructed emotion theory. He has a BA in English and American Literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz, and an MA in English from Colorado State University.

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