Abstract
This paper studies the publishing process, in slaveholding Brazil, of the most important nineteenth-century American antislavery novel: Harriet Beetcher Stowe's "Uncle's Tom Cabin". This text presents the conditions and modalities of the novel's publication in Brazil from 1853 to 1888, and focuses specifically on the analysis of the Portuguese-language edition, published in Paris by Rey & Belhatte , in 1853. Drawing on references from the social history of writings, history of the book and cultural transfers studies, we have considered the interventions effected by the translator, by means of an analysis of the peritextual material and the semantic shifts therein proposed. This edition process is herein analyzed as a case of triangular cultural exchange, highlighting the importance of the European mediations marking the circulation of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in Brazil. We can observe in these analyses how the edition attenuated the novel's social expectations, replacing the immediacy of Stowe's abolitionism for a gradualism that allowed to reader to envision a very protracted end to slavery in the Portuguese-speaking world.
Keywords:
history of the book; Harriet B. Stowe; slavery
