Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s

Uncle Tom Mania: Slavery, Minstrelsy and Transatlantic Culture in the 1850s Sarah Meer. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005.

This excellent and informative study of minstrelsy and the role it played during the second half of the 19th century in America and Britain demonstrates how deeply and richly American culture influenced world culture during the Civil War and Reconstruction years and has ever since. Instead of concentrating on the top of the pyramid of Stowe's novel and its effect, Meer centers on the bottom - or somewhere in the middle - of the explosion...