Focusing on the issue of slavery through the main character, Uncle Tom, a long-suffering Afro-American slave, Beecher Stowe's novel dramatises the harsh conditions he and his like were forced to suffer.
The work's popularity saw it dramatised and burlesqued around the world for many decades after it first appeared in the National Era - as a 40-week serialisation. It was particularly favoured by blackface minstrel companies. Adaptations were also frequently staged in Australia during the second half of the 1800s. These included productions by Alfred Dampier, John F. Sheridan and Lance Lenton , with the latter version burlesuqed as Uncle Tom's Cabin Repainted (1886). The story was still being used on the Australia musical theatre stage well into the second decade of the twentieth century. See, for example, an anonymous adaptation from 1914 (Uncle Tom's Cabin.
