I had never read this before. If only as a historical artifact it is very much worth reading. It is overly sentimental, melodramatic, and didactic. But it is also a powerful page turner that still gave me a fresh feeling of sickness for the horrors of slavery--even after being exposed to vastly more literary and historical depictions of it than people in the 1850s would have experienced. It is a powerful condemnation of the ways that slavery warps and corrupts slaveowners and how even the "good" ones end up with bad outcomes.

I can understand why people have been bothered by the character of Uncle Tom, but in general Harriet Beecher Stowe presents a simple and powerful version of Christianity and forgiveness that is almost pure goodness and expressed not just through Uncle Tom but also various Quaker characters and also some of the children (e.g., Eva, one of the slaveholders daughter's who dies like a sacrificial lamb). Moreover, Stowe presents a range of enslaved characters from hard working to not, Christian and not, caring and not, just like she presents a range of white characters. In many ways this feels honest and not sentimentalizing or trivializing but instead showing there are a wide range of men, women, Black, white, etc.

There is a way the book feels like it should proceed through every aspect of slavery. Showing the way it functions differently in different states, what a slave warehouse is like, family separations, escape, almost like it is methodically trying to paint a complete picture--and to draw you increasingly in to the horrors that it shows.

It is clear that every choice Stowe made was in service of her end. That makes the book more dated than many. But also less frivolous than many. And the history itself is so important and much of what she has to say is authentic and proximate enough that it is well worth reading.