Tom show: History and Key Facts

Tom show is a general term for any play or musical based (often only loosely) on the 1852 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe. The novel attempts to depict the harsh reality of slavery. Due to the weak copyright laws at the time, a number of unauthorized plays based on the novel were staged for decades, many of them mocking the novel's social message, and leading to the pejorative term "Uncle Tom".

Even though Uncle Tom's Cabin was the best-selling novel of the 19th century, far more Americans of that time saw the story in a stage play or musical than read the book. In 1902, it was reported that a quarter million of these presentations had already been performed in the United States. Some of these shows were essentially minstrel shows that utilized caricatures and stereotypes of black people, and thus inverting the intent of the novel. "Tom shows" were popular in the United States from the 1850s through the early 1900s.

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