Harriet Beecher Stowe: Dred

Dred : A Tale of the Great Dismal Swamp, ed. Judie Newman This, the first modern edition of Stowe’s second abolitionist bestseller, launched the novel back into the American literary canon, as a compelling dramatization of a heroic black revolutionary leading a community of escaped slaves. Writing strategically against slavery, Stowe deployed all the weapons in a great writer’s armoury; romance, realism, religious appeal, Gothic, broad comedy, strong black women characters, frontier violence and a blistering satire on the American legal system. Essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the centrality of slavery to American literature and history- and for anyone who enjoys a great novelist writing at the height of her powers. Keywords: Slavery, Novel, African American Studies, Religion, Law, Race-Relations, Insurrection, Women’s Studies. Judie Newman is Professor of American Studies at the University of Nottingham.