the-french-artist/wikipedia_20220301.simple_sentence_split huggingface dataset:
Flag of the State of Deseret
Dawson City is a place in the Yukon Territory.
It used to be a city, but is not one anymore.
It is the second-largest place in Yukon, after Whitehorse, and has 1,327 people.
Dawson was at its biggest during the Klondike Gold Rush of 1898, and served as a base for mining.
Many people became rich not from finding gold, but from running boarding houses/general stores because of good business from all of the miners.
It was the capital of Yukon from 1898 to 1952.
Settlements in Yukon
The Great Seal of the State of Utah was adopted on April 3, 1896 at the first regular session of the Legislature (January, February, March, April 1896).
The first seal was made by Harry Edwards and cost $65.00.
The meanings of the symbols
She had her first Biathlon World Cup race in the 2005-06 season.
One year later, she became one of the stars of the German biathlon team with three gold medals in the 2007 Biathlon World Championships in Antholz, Italy.
In 2008, she won three other gold medals in the Biathlon World Cup in Östersund, Sweden, and reached also the first place of the Biathlon World Cup in that year.
In the 2010 Winter Olympics she was one of the gold medal favourites.
The first race (on 13 February) was the 7.5 km sprint, where she reached a silver medal, beaten only by Anastasia Kuzmina from Slovakia.
Three days later (on 16 February), she won the gold medal in the pursuit race.
On 21 February, her second gold medal followed in the mass start.
Magdalena Neuner's website
Magdalena Neuner's results on the official International Biathlon Union website
Sport shooters
Sportswomen
Wynton Learson Marsalis (born October 18, 1961) is an American jazz and classical trumpeter.
He has won nine Grammy Awards for his music.
His father was Ellis Marsalis Jr..
The Americas (or America) are lands in the Western Hemisphere that are also known as the New World.
Comprising the continents of North America and South America, along with their associated islands, they cover 8.3% of the Earth's total surface area (28.4% of its land area).
While the word American is usually used to mean a person or a thing from the United States, the most populated country in the Americas, sometimes people and things from anywhere in the Americas are called "American".
Colonel Ilan Ramon (, born Ilan Wolferman; June 20, 1954 - February 1, 2003) was an Israeli air force pilot and the only Israeli astronaut.
He was a member of the STS-107 mission crew and he died during Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003.
His mother was a holocaust survivor (at Auschwitz concentration camp) and his father fought for Israeli independence.
Ramon was married to activist Rona Ramon.
Official biography at NASA
Photo of Ilan Ramon with Chabad Rabbi Zvi Konikov
Ilan Ramon STS-107 Crew Memorial
Ilan Ramon Memorial pages in the Israel Science and Technology Directory
Spacefacts biography of Ilan Ramon
Excerpts from Ilan Ramon's diary
Daniel Johnston (January 22, 1961 – September 11, 2019) was an American songwriter, singer, and artist who lived in Texas.
Johnston has bipolar disorder.
The movie The Devil and Daniel Johnston is about his life and music career.
Born in Sacramento, California, Johnston grew up in West Virginia in a Christian family.
He became a Beatles fan when he was young, then went off to college but did not finish.
He moved to Texas to live with his brother, and ended up joining a circus.
He left the circus after another worker beat him up for taking too long in a restroom, and found a church in Austin, Texas that helped him find somewhere to live.
Johnston's religious beliefs are mentioned in many of his songs, especially on his CD 1990.
Johnston's music career started in Austin in the 1980s.
He made cassette tapes of songs he performed on a chord organ and gave many of them out for free to people he met.
He started playing concerts and became very popular with music fans in Texas.
Johnston appeared on MTV, and became even more popular when Nirvana singer Kurt Cobain wore a T-shirt with the cover art of one of Johnston's CDs.
Johnston released one CD on Atlantic Records, a major record label (a big company that helps make CDs and sells them around the world) called Fun in 1994.
However, he was not able to make any more CDs with Atlantic Records because not enough people bought Fun.
However, Johnston still writes songs, and his drawings appear on the covers of his CDs.
His latest CD is Is and Always Was, which came out in 2009.
In 2010, movie director David Miller announced that he was writing the script for a new movie about Johnston that would be very different from The Devil and Daniel Johnston.
Johnston died of a suspected heart attack at his home in Waller, Texas on September 11, 2019.
He was 58.
Albums released on CD
Yip/Jump Music (1983)
Hi, How Are You (1983)
Continued Story with Texas Instruments (1985)
A Texas Trip (1987)
1990 (1990)
Artistic Vice (1991)
Fun (1994)
Why Me? (
Rejected Unknown (2001)
Fear Yourself (2003)
Freak Brain (2005)
Lost and Found (2006)
Is and Always Was (2009)
Singers from Sacramento, California
Singers from West Virginia
Writers from West Virginia
The treepies are a type of bird.
They are a member of the crow family (Corvidae).
There are four different genus of treepie.
They are Dendrocitta, Crypsirina, Temnurus and Platysmurus.
There are 11 species of treepie.
Treepies are similar to magpies.
They have long tails.
Most treepies are black, white, gray or brown.
They live in tropical forests.
They spend a lot of time in the tops of trees.
They do not come to feed on the ground very often.
fr:Dendrocitta
Velcro is a brandname and trademark owned by the Velcro Companies for hook-and-loop fasteners.
Hook-and-loop fasteners have a "hook" side, which is a piece of fabric covered with tiny hooks, and a "loop" side, which is covered with even smaller and "hairier" loops.
When the two sides are pressed together, the hooks catch in the loops and hold the pieces together.
When they are separated, they make a special "ripping" sound.
The person who invented hook-and-loop was a scientist named George de Mestral.
During a hunting vacation in Switzerland, de Mestral came home one evening and tried to remove the burrs stuck to his dog's fur.
He was very surprised to see how hard the burrs were to remove.
That night he studied the burrs under a microscope and noticed that each burr was covered with hundreds of small hooks acting like  hands.
De Mestral decided that this burr could be made to close fabric instead of buttons and zippers.
By copying the hook pattern hat he saw on burrs, he made hook-and-loop!
George de Mestral created the Velcro trademark by combining the French words for velvet (velour) and hook (crochet).
Velcro Official US company website
closeup of Velcro hooks and loops
VELCRO USA INC.
Celebrates 50TH
VELCRO Patent  - from Google Patents Anniversary
Adhesives Guide by Velcro USA  - Adhesive Guide by Velcro USA
Māmane (Hawaiian language) is a shrub of Hawai'i in the Sophora genus.
It is suitable for gardens.
It is highly polymorphic, growing as a shrub or tree, and able to reach a height of  in tree form.
It is grow fast in every island of Hawaiian archipelago, so botanists describe many local forms including S.unifoliolata
If mamane were to disappear from Hawai'i it would take with it the palila bird, which is also endangered due to the lack of enough māmane trees.
Loxoides bauilleui, palila, feeds on unripe seeds of the māmane
Plant of Hawaii
Mortality rate is a measurement.
It measures the number of deaths in a population.
It is often reported as a number of deaths per 1000 individuals per year.
A mortality rate of 9 in a population of 1,000 would mean 9 deaths per year in that entire population.
Ricotta is an Italian fresh whey cheese made from the whey of sheep's milk or cow's milk.
Whey is a watery liquid that separates from curds when cheese is made.
Ricotta is soft, grainy and white.
It can be used in Italian desserts like cheesecake or cannoli or in dishes like lasagna.
It contains protein and is a dairy product.
Whey is a watery liquid that comes out of milk when it has been curdled and strained.
It is also called milk plasma.
It is a by-product of cheese making.
Sweet whey is made during the making of rennet types of hard cheese like Cheddar or Swiss.
Acid whey (also known as "sour whey") is made during the making of acid types of cheese such as cottage cheese.
Whey also forms as a liquid on the top of yoghurt.
Whey can be used to make whey cheeses like ricotta.
It can be added to processed foods like bread, pastry or crackers.
It can also be used to feed animals.
Curds are a dairy product made by curdling milk with rennet or yeast so that it separates, and taking away the liquid part (called whey).
Milk that has been left to go sour will also naturally separate into curds and whey.
Curds are used to make cheese.
Curds and whey can be eaten together as a dish.
Pokhara is the second largest city of Nepal.
It is the main tourism centre of Nepal.
It is 200 km away from the capital, Kathmandu.
The Seal of the State of Colorado is an adaptation of the "Territorial Seal" which was adopted by the "First Territorial Assembly" on November 6, 1861.
The only changes made in the Territorial Seal design being the changing of the words, "State of Colorado" and the figures "1876" for the corresponding words on the territorial seal.
The first "General Assembly" of the State of Colorado approved the adoption of the state seal on March 15, 1877.
The "Colorado Secretary of State" alone is authorized to affix the Great Seal of Colorado to any document whatsoever.
The Flag of the State of Maine has the state coat of arms on a blue field.
In the center of the shield a moose rests under a tall pine tree.
A farmer and seaman represent the normal reliance on agriculture and the sea by the state.
The "North Star" represents the state motto: Dirigo ("I Lead").
The Seal of the State of Maine was adopted in June 1820.
There have been different kinds in the details of the seal, but the overall design and images remain true to the first.
The center of the seal is a shield with a tranquil scene of a moose resting in a field bordered by water and woods, pine tree stand tall directly behind the moose.
On either side of the shield, a farmer rests on his scythe, and a sailor leans on an anchor.
Above the shield is the motto "Dirigo" (I lead), and a North Star.
The legislature of 1919 thought that the design of the seal should no longer vary, and the design is still used today.
A doctorate is a degree earned by passing a doctoral dissertation.
Usually, it refers to a Ph.D., but it can also be an Doctor of Medicine or an Juris Doctor.
Colleges often give honorary doctorates to famous people who speak there.
In computing, a cluster is made of many individual computers that work together to solve a problem at hand.
Clusters can have different forms: They can be whole computers working together, or only CPUs.
These CPUs can communicate over a fast network, but they share the same hard disks, for example.
Depending on the problem, solving it with a cluster of cheaper components can be less expensive that investing in better hardware that costs more.
Grid computing is different in that the individual computers work on separate tasks that are part of a large problem.
They are usually more different from one another and geographically further apart than cluster computers are.
Garry Kasparov (born 13 April 1963 in Baku, Azerbaijan) is a Russian chess grandmaster and political activist.
He was born with the name Garry Weinstein, and is partly of Jewish descent.
He was the World Chess Champion from 1985 to 2000.
In 1993 he broke away from FIDE to make a rival organisation (the PCA), because he felt FIDE had failed to raise enough money for world title matches.
There is controversy about that period.
By any measure, he is one of the greatest chess players of all time, and the highest-rated player before Magnus Carlsen.
Kasparov became the youngest non-disputed World Chess Champion in 1985 at the age of 22.
He held the official FIDE world title until 1993, when an argument with FIDE led him to set up a rival company, the Professional Chess Association.
He continued to hold the "Classical" World Chess Championship until his defeat by Vladimir Kramnik in 2000.
Kasparov lost a match (a series of chess games) against Deep Blue, a computer made by IBM, in 1997.
Lately, retired from competition, he has been coaching Magnus Carlsen, the young player from Norway who is the current world #1.
After retiring from chess, Kasparov became involved in Russian politics.
In 2005, he traveled around Russia, speaking against Vladimir Putin, who was President of Russia at that time.
The same year he created the United Civil Front, a political movement whose main goal is to dismantle Putin's regime and restore democracy in Russia.
Kasparov was also one of the founders of The Other Russia, an opposition coalition which unites many left and nationalist politicians.
He helped organize marches of dissenters involving several thousand people rallying against Putin and governors of Moscow and Saint Petersburg.
In October 2007, Kasparov announced his intention of standing for the Russian presidency.
In November 2007, he was detained by police at a rally in Moscow and given a jail sentence of five days.
On 12 December 2007, Kasparov announced that he had to withdraw his presidential candidacy due to inability to rent a hall where at least 500 of his supporters could meet to endorse his candidacy, as is legally required.
Kasparov's spokeswoman accused the government of using pressure to discourage anyone from renting a hall for the gathering.
In 2008 Kasparov and his United Civil Front joined the Solidarity movement.
Azerbaijani chess players
Russian chess players
Stanley Vann (born Leicester, 15 February 1910 - 27 March 2010) was an English composer, organist, choral conductor, and choir trainer.
He contributed a great deal to music in the Anglican church tradition.
He was Director of Music at Peterborough Cathedral from 1953 to 1977.
On 15 February 2010 he celebrated his 100th birthday.
He died the following month.
Vann was born in Leicester.
He started to learn the piano when he was about six years old.
At the age of 17 he learned the organ, and by the time he was 20 he had passed his  ARCM, ARCO and FRCO organ diplomas.
The start of a musical career
In 1931 he became Assistant Organist at Leicester Cathedral.
In 1933 he became Organist at Gainsborough Parish Church, then went to Leamington Spa as Organist of Holy Trinity church in 1939.
He started a choir and an orchestra there: the Leamington Spa Bach Choir and the Warwickshire Symphony Orchestra.
In 1949 he got the jobs of Organist at Chelmsford Cathedral and Professor of Harmony and Counterpoint at Trinity College, London.
In Chelmsford he started the Essex Symphony Orchestra.
In 1909 Vann became Master of the Music in Peterborough Cathedral.
He stayed in this job until he retired in 1977.
The choir was not particularly good when he started there, but he soon made them into an excellent choir.
In 1971 he was given a Lambeth doctorate by the Archbishop of Canterbury for his services to music.
When he retired he first moved to Wansford in Cambridgeshire so that he was half way between his son (in Yorkshire) and his daughter (in Berkshire).
He continued to work there, training the church choir, giving singing lessons, and composing.
Later he moved to Yorkshire to be nearer to family.
He died aged 100 after falling down and breaking his hip.
Stanley Vann composed a great deal of music, mostly for the Anglican church service.
His compositions include hymn tunes, anthems, motets, chants, organ music and many other pieces.
One of his largest pieces is the Billingshurst Mass, for large chorus and orchestra.
It was first performed in Chichester Cathedral in 2000.
In 2000 a  concert was given in All Saints Church, Peterborough to celebrate his 90th birthday.
On Sunday 14 February 2010 many cathedrals and churches in England arranged special concerts and services to celebrate his 100th birthday
The BBC  broadcast a special choral evensong on Radio 3 on Wednesday 24 February from Peterborough Cathedral (Wednesday 17 February is Ash Wednesday, so that a lot of his music would not have been suitable.).
The Royal College of Organists or RCO, is an organisation based in the United Kingdom, but with members around the world.
Its job is to support organ playing and choral music.
People who learn the organ can go there to take professional organ examinations.
When the RCO started in 1864 by Richard Limpus it was called the College of Organists.
It was given a Royal Charter in 1893.
In 1903 it was offered an extremely cheap 99-year lease on a beautiful  building in Kensington, West London.
The college was there until 1991 when it moved to a church in the City of London.
In 2003 it moved again to Birmingham.
The Colleague Diploma (CRCO) is a qualification for people who are good organists, but not necessarily at a professional level.
The Associateship Diploma (ARCO) is a professional qualification.
The candidate has to play the organ very well and do a music theory examination.
The Fellowship Diploma (FRCO) is for people who already have ARCO.
It is harder than ARCO.
The Choral Directing Diploma (Dip CHD) demonstrates professional choral conducting.
The Licentiateship in Teaching (LTRCO) is a professional qualification for organ teachers who already have either the ARCO or FRCO.
Royal College of Organists Official Website
1860s establishments in the United Kingdom
ARCO (short for Atlantic Richfield Company, the original name) is a United States oil company.
It has operationsn 2 in the United States, Indonesia, the North Sea, and the South China Sea.
As of July 2011, it had more than 1,300 gas stations in the western part of the United States.
Atlantic Petroleum, which opened its first gas station in 1915 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Richfield Oil Company, which opened its first gas station in 1917 in Los Angeles, California.
The two companies merged in 1966, and bought Sinclair Oil Corporation in 1969.
In 1978, ARCO opened its first ampm convenience store.
Between 1970 and 2000, ARCO had a complicated corporate history.
By 1985, it sold its Eastern US business to a new Atlantic Petroleum.
In 2000, the remaining Western US business was bought by British Petroleum (BP).
Finally, in 2013, BP sold ARCO and the Carson Refinery to Tesoro for $2.5 billion.
Oil discovery
In 1957, Richfield was the first to drill for oil in Alaska.
On July 15 of that year they struck oil with their first well.
It was the first major oil discovery in Alaska and tested at 900 barrels a day.
In 1968 they partnered with Exxon for Alaska North Slope oil production.
In 1980, they were the seventh largest oil company in the United States.
ARCO Official Website
Tesoro Official Website
Rollerblading
An economic bubble happens when a market goes through a very fast inflation of value.
This increase is followed by a quick decrease in value, called a "crash" or a "bubble burst".
Economic bubbles can be caused by many things, but many economists believe that economic bubbles are related to inflation.
An economic bubble can cause an economic crisis due to a loss of investment both by companies and individuals, such as the Great Depression or the Economic crisis of 2007-2010.
An economic bubble occurs due to the human psychology of an expectation of an unlimited demand for any particular commodity.
The market moves up quickly as the investors see an increase in prices due to increase in demand.
Prices may eventually fall when supply increases beyond the demand, resulting in the bursting of the bubble.
Predicting when this will happen is difficult, hence it may surprise investors.
In France, because of the census, the INSEE has allowed people who live in one place and study in a different place to be counted twice, so as to show how the population moves.
Because of this, each commune in France has many numbers of how many people live in it.
For example, students may be counted where they study and where they live but do not study (the place they were born in).
It is just like allowing students in the United States to vote in the town election of the place they are studying in and the town election where they were born.
Types of population counts
Population municipale: people that live in that place
Population comptée à part: people are there for a while, but not forever (soldiers, prisoners)
Population totale: population municipale + population comptée à part
Doubles comptes: part of Population comptée à part, which are people working or studying (students, soldiers) there and are counted in another town's Population municipale
Population sans doubles comptes: population totale - doubles comptes
The official meanings on the INSEE site
Understanding the census.
The history of the census
The results of the 1999 census.
Population, a page per view.
Population of French communes of more than 2000 inhabitants.
The glass transition is the transition of amorphous solids from a hard and brittle state into a molten or rubber-like state.
An amorphous solid that goes through a glass transition is called a glass.
Supercooling a viscous liquid into the glass state is called vitrification.
The glass transition temperature Tg is always lower than the melting temperature, Tm, of the crystalline state of the material, if one exists.
Above a glass transition temperature, a plastic is rubbery.
Below the glass transition temperature, a plastic is solid.
Thermosets, or thermo-setting plastics, burn up before they reach their melt temperature, but most thermosets also undergo glass transition.
Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly is an anti-slavery novel by Harriet Beecher Stowe.
It was published in 1852.
It greatly influenced many people's thoughts about African Americans and slavery in the United States.
It also strengthened the conflict between the Northern and Southern United States.
This led to the American Civil War.
The book's effect was so powerful that Lincoln said when he met Stowe at the beginning of the Civil War, "So this is the little lady who made this big war."
The main character of the novel is Uncle Tom, a patiente sentimental novel showed the effects of slavery.
It also said that Christian love is stronger than slavery.
Uncle Tom's Cabin was the most popular novel of the 19th century, and the second best-selling book of the century (the first one was the Bible).
It helped abolitionism spread in the 1850s.
In these days, it has been praised as a very important help to anti-slavery.
However, it has also been criticized for making stereotypes about black people.
Inspiration and references
Harriet Beecher Stowe was born in Connecticut.
She was an abolitionist.
Stowe wrote her novel because of the 1850 passage of the second Fugitive Slave Act.
This law punished people who helped slaves run away.
It also made the North stop and return the South's black runaways.
Mrs. Edward Beecher wrote to Harriet ("Hattie"), "If I could use a pen as you can, I would write something that will make this whole nation feel what an accursed thing slavery is."
At that time, Stowe was a wife with six children who sometimes wrote for magazines.
Her son, Charles Stowe, said that his mother read this letter out loud to her children.
When she finished the letter, she stood up, and with "an expression on her face that stamped itself on the mind of her child", she said, "I will write something...I will if I live."
That is how Uncle Tom's Cabin began.
According to Stowe, she began thinking about Uncle Tom's Cabin; or, Life Among the Lowly as she was in a church in February 1851.
She had a vision of a Christian black man being beaten and praying for the people who were beating him as he died.
She was also partly inspired to write her novel by the autobiography of Josiah Henson.
Henson was a black man who had run away and helped many black slaves.
She was also helped by the book American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses by Theodore Dwight Weld and the Grimké sisters.
Stowe also said that she got lots of ideas for Uncle Tom's Cabin by talking to runaway slaves when she was living in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In her book A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853), Stowe wrote about the stories that inspired her when she was writing Uncle Tom's Cabin.
However,  later research showed that Stowe did not actually read many of the stories inside the book until after her novel was published.
Uncle Tom's Cabin began in a series in an anti-slavery newspaper, The National Era.
The National Era had also printed other works Stowe had written.
Because everybody liked the story so much, John P. Jewett of Boston asked Stowe to turn the serial into a book.
Stowe was not sure if people would like to read the story as a book.
However, she finally agreed.
John Jewett, sure that the book would be popular, asked Hammatt Billings to engrave six pictures for the book.
In March 20, 1852, the finished book came out.
By June it was selling ten thousand copies a week.
By October American sales alone were 150 thousand copies.
In the first year it was published, 300,000 copies of the book were sold, and it was translated into many important languages.
Eliza's escape, Tom is sold
A Kentucky farmer named Arthur Shelby is afraid of losing his farm because of debts.
Even though he and his wife, Emily Shelby, are kind to their slaves, he decides to sell two of them: Uncle Tom, a middle-aged man with a wife and children, and Harry, the son of his wife's maid Eliza.
Emily Shelby is shocked and unhappy because she promised Eliza that she would not sell her son.
George Shelby, her son, is unhappy because he admires Uncle Tom as his friend and Christian.
When Eliza hears about Mr. Shelby's plans to sell her son, she decides to run away with her only son.
She writes a letter saying sorry to Mrs. Shelby and runs away that night.
Meanwhile, Uncle Tom is sold and put into a boat, which sails down the Mississippi River.
There, he makes friends with a girl called Evangeline ("Eva").
When Eva falls into the water and he saves her, Eva's father, Augustine St. Clare, buys Tom.
Eva and Tom become good friends because they both love Jesus very deeply.
Eliza's family hunted, Tom's life with St. Clare
During Eliza's escape, she meets her husband, George Harris, who had run away before her.
They decide to try to run away to Canada.
However, they are hunted by a slave hunter named Tom Loker.
Tom Loker finally traps Eliza and her family, so that George shoots Loker.
Eliza is worried that Loker might die and go to hell.
Because of this, she persuades her husband to take him to a Quaker town to get better.
The gentle Quakers change Tom Loker greatly.
In St. Clare's house, St. Clare argues with his sister, Miss Ophelia.
She thinks that slavery is wrong, but is prejudiced against blacks.
St. Clare buys Topsy, a black child, and challenges Miss Ophelia to educate her.
Miss Ophelia tries, but fails.
After Tom has lived with St. Clare for about two years, Eva becomes very sick.
She has a vision of heaven before she dies.
Because of her death, many people change.
Miss Ophelia loses her prejudice of black people, Tospy decides to become "good", and St. Clare decides to free Tom.
Tom's life with Simon Legree
St. Clare, however, is hurt when he tries to stop a fight at a tavern and dies.
Because of this, he cannot keep his promise to free Tom.
His wife sells Tom to a plantation owner named Simon Legree.
Legree takes Tom to Louisiana.
There, he meets other slaves, including Emmeline (who Legree bought at the same time that he bought Tom).
Legree begins to hate Tom when Tom disobeys his order to whip the other slaves.
Legree beats him, and decides to destroy Tom's faith in God.
However, Tom secretly continues to read the Bible and help the other slaves.
At the plantation, Tom meets Cassy, another black slave.
Her two children had been sold, and she had killed her third child because she was afraid that her child would be sold, too.
Loker has been changed because of the Quakers.
George, Eliza, and Harry have finally reached Canada and become free.
Meanwhile, Uncle Tom feels so unhappy that he almost gives up, but he has two visions of Jesus and Eva.
He decides to continue to be a Christian, even if he has to die.
Cassy and Emmeline, with Tom’s encouragement, run away.
They cleverly use Legree’s superstitious fears to help them.
When Tom does not tell Legree where they are, Legree tells his men to beat him to death.
Tom forgives the two men who beat him as he dies, and they feel sorry and become Christians.
George Shelby comes just as Tom is dying to free him.
He is very angry and sad.
However, Tom, saying smilingly, “Who,—who,—who shall separate us from the love of Christ?”
dies.
Important characters
Uncle Tom, the title character of the story, is a patient, noble, unselfish black slave.
Stowe wanted him to be a “noble hero”: in the book, he stands up for what he believes in.
Even though they do not want to, even his enemies admire him.
Recently, however, his name has also been used negatively.
People often think of "Uncle Tom" as an old black man trying to make his masters happy, as people have criticized his quiet acceptance of slavery.
However, others argue that this is not true.
First of all, Uncle Tom is not really old - he is only eight years older than Mr. Shelby, which shows that he is probably around fifty.
Also, Tom is not happy with slavery.
His acceptance is not because of stupidity or because he likes slavery.
It is because of his religious faith, which tells him to love everyone.
Wherever Uncle Tom goes, he loves and spreads comfort and kindness.
He helps slaves escape, such as Eliza, Emmeline and Cassy.
He also refuses to beat other slaves.
Because of this, he is beaten himself.
Stowe was not trying to make Tom an example for blacks but for white and black people.
She says that if white people were to be loving and unselfish like Uncle Tom, slavery would be impossible.
Eliza Harris
Eliza Harris is Mrs. Shelby's favorite maid, George Harris' wife, and Harry's mother.
Eliza is a brave, intelligent, and very beautiful young slave.
Eliza loves her son, Harry, very much.
It is possible her love for him was even greater because she lost two of her first infant children.
Her motherly love is shown when she bravely escapes with her son.
Perhaps the most well-known part of Uncle Tom's Cabin is the part where Eliza escapes on the Ohio River with Harry.
This escape is said to have been inspired by a story heard in the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati by John Rankin to Stowe's husband Calvin, a professor at the school.
In Rankin's story, in February, 1838, a young slave woman had escaped across the frozen Ohio River to the town of Ripley, Ohio with her child in her arms and stayed at his house before she had gone further towards the north.
Eva "Evangeline" St. Clare is St. Clare and Marie's angelic daughter.
She enters the story when Tom saves her from drowning when he was going to be sold.
Eva asks her father to buy Tom.
She says, "I want to make him happy".
Through her, Tom becomes St. Clare's leading coachman and Eva's "especial attendant (helper)...Tom had...orders to let everything else go, and attend to Miss Eva whenever she wanted him,—orders which our readers may fancy (imagine) were far from disagreeable to him."
She is very beautiful: "Her form was the perfection of childish beauty...Her face was remarkable less for its perfect beauty of features than for a singular (strange) and dreamy earnestness (seriousness) of expression...all marked her out (made her different) from the other children, and made every one turn and look after her".
To Tom, she "...seemed something almost divine; and whenever her golden head and deep blue eyes peered (looked) out upon him...he half believed that he saw one of the angels stepped out of his New Testament."
He says that "She's got the Lord's mark in her forehead."
Eva is an almost perfect, Christ-like child.
She is very sad about slavery.
She does not see the difference between blacks and whites.
She talks very much about love and forgiveness.
Even Topsy is touched by her love.
Eva becomes one of the most important people in Tom's life.
Ophelia St. Clare
Ophelia St. Clare is perhaps the most complicated female character in the novel.
St. Clare calls her, "...desperately ... good; it tires me to death to think of it."
She does not like slavery.
However, she does not like to be touched or come close to any black person as a human being.
When she first saw Eva "...shaking hands and kissing" with the blacks, she declared that it had "...fairly turned her stomach (made her feel sick)."
She adds, "I want to be kind to everybody, and I wouldn't have anything hurt; but as to kissing...How can she?"
She has a "clear, strong, active mind", and is very practical.
However, she has a warm heart, which she shows in her love for St. Clare and Eva.
Ophelia hates slavery, but has a deep prejudice against blacks.
St. Clare, as a challenge to her, buys Topsy.
He tells her to try educating her.
At first she tries to teach and help Topsy simply because of duty.
However, Stowe says that duty is not enough: there must be love.
Eva's death changes Ophelia.
When Topsy cries, "She said she loved me...there an't (is not) nobody left now...!"
Ophelia gently says, as "honest tears" fell down her face, "Topsy, you poor child...I can love you, though I am not like that dear little child.
I hope I've learnt something of the love of Christ from her.
I can love you...and I'll try to help you to grow up a good Christian girl."
Stowe thought that there were many people like Miss Ophelia St. Clare, who did not like slavery but could not think of blacks as people.
She wanted to write about such problems through Miss Ophelia.
Arthur Shelby, the owner of Uncle Tom in Kentucky, Shelby sells Tom to Mr. Haley to pay his debts.
Arthur Shelby is a clever, kind, and basically good-hearted man.
However, he still does slavery and is not as morally strong as his wife.
Stowe used him to show that slavery makes everyone who does it become wicked - not just the cruel masters.
Emily Shelby is Arthur Shelby's loving, gentle, and Christian wife.
She thinks slavery is wrong.
She tries to persuade her husband to help the Shelby slaves and is one of the many kind female characters in the story.
George Shelby is the young son of Mr. and Mrs. Shelby.
Good-hearted, passionate, and loving, he is Uncle Tom's friend.
Because of this, he is very angry when Uncle Tom is sold.
After Tom dies, he decides to free all the slaves on the Shelby's farm, saying, "Witness (see), eternal God!
oh, witness, that, from this hour, I will do what one man can to drive out this curse of slavery from my land!"
He is morally stronger than his father.
He does what he promises and thinks.
George Harris Eliza's husband.
A very clever and curious mulatto man, he loves his family very much and fights for his freedom bravely and proudly.
Augustine St. Clare Eva's father.
Augustine St. Clare is a romantic, playful man.
He does not believe in God, and drinks wine every night.
He loves Eva very deeply and feels sorry for his slaves.
However, like Mr. Shelby, he does not do anything about slavery.
Marie The wife of St. Clare.
She is "...a yellow faded, sickly woman, whose time was divided among a variety of fanciful diseases, and who considered (thought) herself...the most ill-used and suffering person [that lived]..." Silly, complaining, and selfish, she is the opposite of people like Mrs. Shelby and Mrs. Bird.
She thinks slavery is good and says about Topsy, "If I had my way, now, I'd send...[her] out, and have her thoroughly whipped; I'd have her whipped till she couldn't stand!"
After her husband dies, she sells all the slaves.
Topsy the "heathenish" black slave girl who Miss Ophelia tries to change.
At first, Miss Ophelia "...[approaches] her new subject very much as a person might be supposed to approach a black spider, supposing them to have benevolent (kind) designs toward it".
Topsy feels this difference from duty and love.
When Eva says, "Miss Ophelia would love you, if you were good," she laughs and says, "No; she can't bar (bear) me, 'cause I'm a nigger (black)!
she'd 's soon have a toad touch her!
There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do nothin' (nothing)!
I don't care."
However, in time, she grows to love and respect people through Eva's love.
She later becomes a missionary to Africa.
When she first enters the story, she says that she does not know who made her: "I s'pect I growed.
Don't think nobody never made me."
In the early-to-mid 1900s, some doll companies made dolls that looked like Topsy.
The expression "growed like Topsy" (later "grew like Topsy") began to be used in the English language.
At first it meant to describe growing without planning it.
Later, it simply meant growing a lot.
Simon Legree a slave-owner who cannot break Uncle Tom of his Christian faith.
He has Uncle Tom whipped to death because of this.
He sexually exploits his female slaves Cassy and Emmeline.
His name is used as a synonym for a cruel and greedy man.
Uncle Tom's Cabin'''s most important theme is the evil of slavery.
Every part in Uncle Tom's Cabin develops the characters and the story.
But most importantly, it always tries to show the reader that slavery is evil, un-Christian, and should not be allowed.
One way Stowe showed the evil of slavery was how it forced families from each other.
Stowe thought mothers were the "model for all of American life".
She also believed that only women could save the United States from slavery.
Because of this, another very important theme of Uncle Tom's Cabin is the moral power and sanctity of women.
White women like Mrs. Bird, St. Clare’s mother, Legree’s mother, and Mrs. Shelby try to make their husbands help their slaves.
Eva, who is the "ideal Christian", says that blacks and whites are the same.
Black women like Eliza are brave and pious.
She escapes from slavery to save her son, and by the end of the novel, has made her whole family come together again.
Some critics said that Stowe's female characters are often unrealistic.
However, Stowe's novel made many people remember "the importance of women's influence" and helped the women's rights movement later.
Stowe's puritanical religious beliefs are also one of the biggest themes in the novel.
She explores what Christianity is like.
She believed that the most important thing in Christianity was love for everyone.
She also believed that Christian theology shows that slavery is wrong.
This theme can be seen when Tom urges St. Clare to "look away to Jesus" after St. Clare's daughter Eva dies.
After Tom dies, George Shelby says, "What a thing it is to be a Christian."
Because Christian themes are so important, and because Stowe often directly spoke in the novel about religion and faith, the novel is written in the "form of a sermon."
Style Uncle Tom's Cabin is written in a sentimental and melodramatic style.
This style was often used in the 19th century sentimental novel and domestic fiction (also called women's fiction).
These genres were the most popular novels of Stowe's time.
It usually had female characters and a style that made readers feel sympathy and emotion for them.
Stowe's novel is different from other sentimental novels because she writes about a large theme like slavery.
It is also different because she has a man (Uncle Tom) as the main character.
However, she still tried to make her readers have strong feelings when they read Uncle Tom's Cabin, like making them cry when Eva died.
This kind of writing made readers react powerfully.
For instance, Georgiana May, a friend of Stowe's, wrote a letter to the writer.
In the letter, she said that "I was up (awake) last night long after one o'clock, reading and finishing Uncle Tom's Cabin.
I could not leave it any more than I could have left a dying child."
Another reader said that she thought about the book all the time and even thought about changing her daughter's name to Eva.
The death of Eva affected lots of people.
In 1852, 300 baby girls in Boston were named Eva.
Even though many readers were very moved, literary critics did not like the style in Uncle Tom's Cabin and other sentimental novels.
They said these books were written by women and had "women's sloppy (messy) emotions."
One literary critic said that if the novel not been about slavery, "it would be just another sentimental novel".
Another said the book was a "piece of hack (messy) work."
In The Literary History of the United States, George F. Whicher called Uncle Tom's Cabin "Sunday-school fiction".
However, in 1985 Jane Tompkins wrote differently about Uncle Tom's Cabin in her book In Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction.
Tompkins praised Uncle Tom's Cabin's style.
She said that sentimental novels showed how women's emotions changed the world in a good way.
She also said that the popular domestic novels written in the 19th century, like Uncle Tom's Cabin, were intelligently written.
She also said that Uncle Tom's Cabin shows a "critique of American society far more devastating (powerful) than any ... by better-known critics such as Hawthorne and Melville."
Reactions to the novel Uncle Tom's Cabin has had a very great influence.
There are not many novels in history that changed society so powerfully.
When it was published, Uncle Tom's Cabin, people who defended slavery were very angry and protested against it.
Some people even wrote books against it.
Abolitionists praised it very much.
As a best-seller, the novel greatly influenced later protest literature.
Contemporary and world reaction
As soon as it was published, Uncle Tom's Cabin made people in the American South very angry.
The novel was also greatly criticized by people who supported slavery.
A famous novelist from the South, William Gilmore Simms, said that the book was not true.
Others called the novel criminal and said it was full of lies.
A person who sold books in Mobile, Alabama had to leave town for selling the novel.
Stowe received threatening letters.
She even received a package with a slave's cut ear once.
Many Southern writers, like Simms, soon began writing their own books about slavery.
Some critics said that Stowe had never actually went to a Southern plantation and she did not know much about Southern life.
They said that because of this, she made wrong descriptions about the South.
However, Stowe always said she made the characters of her book by stories she was told by slaves that ran away to Cincinnati, Ohio, where she lived.
It is reported: "She observed firsthand (herself) several incidents (happenings) which ... [inspired] her to write [the] famous anti-slavery novel.
Scenes she observed (saw) on the Ohio River, including seeing a husband and wife being sold apart, as well as newspaper and magazine accounts and interviews, contributed material to the ... plot."
In 1853, Stowe published A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin.
This was to show the people who had criticized the novel's description of slavery that it was true.
In the book, Stowe writes about the important characters in Uncle Tom's Cabin and about people in real life who were like them.
Through this book, she writes a more "aggressive attack on slavery in the South than the novel itself had".
Like the novel, A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was also a best-seller.
However, many of the works in A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin was read by Stowe after she published her novel.
Even though there were such criticisms, the novel was still very popular.
Stowe's son says that when Abraham Lincoln met her in 1862 Lincoln said, "So this is the little lady who started this great war."
Historians are not sure if Lincoln really said this or not.
In a letter that Stowe wrote to her husband a few hours after meeting with Lincoln, she does not say anything about this sentence.
After this, many writers have said that this novel helped make the North angry at slavery and at the Fugitive Slave Law.
It greatly helped the abolitionist movement.
Union general and politician James Baird Weaver said that the book made him help in the abolitionist movement.
Uncle Tom's Cabin also interested many people in England.
The first London edition came out in May 1852.
It sold 200,000 copies.
Some of this interest was because at that time the British people did not like the United States.
A writer said, "The evil passions which 'Uncle Tom' gratified in England were not hatred or vengeance [of slavery], but national jealousy and national vanity.
We have long been smarting (hurting) under the conceit of America – we are tired of hearing her boast that she is the freest and the most enlightened country that the world has ever seen.
Our clergy hate her voluntary system – our Tories hate her democrats – our Whigs hate her ... All parties hailed Mrs. Stowe as a revolter from the enemy."
Charles Francis Adams, the American minister to Britain during the war, said later that, "Uncle Tom's Cabin; or Life among the Lowly, published in 1852, influenced the world more quickly, powerfully, and dramatically than any other book ever printed.
"Uncle Tom’s Cabin was published in Russia at the end of 1857 and was soon recognized as a classic of world literature.
Many people saw a very strong link between the world of Uncle Tom’s Cabin and the serfdom that still existed in Russia in 1850s.
In his letter to an abolitionist Maria Weston Chapman, Nikolay Turgenev wrote, “Many of the scenes described in the book seem like an exact depiction of equally frightful scenes in Russia.”
Uncle Tom's Cabin served as an educational tool for Russian and Russo-Soviet elite in the post emancipation period, and it also became part of Soviet children literature.
The book has been translated into almost every language.
For example, it was translated into Chinese.
Its translator Lin Shu made this the first Chinese translation of an American novel.
It was also translated into Amharic.
Its 1930 translation was made to help Ethiopia end the suffering of blacks in that nation.
The book was read by so many people that Sigmund Freud believed that some of his patients had been influenced by reading about the whipping of slaves in Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Literary importance and criticismUncle Tom's Cabin was the first widely read political novel in the United States.
It greatly influenced American literature and protest literature.
Some later books that were greatly influenced by Uncle Tom's Cabin are The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.
However, even though Uncle Tom's Cabin was very important, many people thought the book was a mix of "children's fable and propaganda".
Many critics called the book "merely (only) a sentimental novel".
George Whicher wrote in his Literary History of the United States that "Nothing attributable to Mrs. Stowe or her handiwork can account for the novel's enormous (great) vogue (popularity); its author's resources ... of Sunday-school fiction were not remarkable ... melodrama, humor, and pathos … compounded (made up) her book."
Other critics, though, have praised the novel.
Edmund Wilson said that "To expose oneself in maturity (when one has grown up) to Uncle Tom's Cabin may … prove a startling (surprising) experience."
Jane Tompkins said that the novel is one of the classics of American literature.
She suggested that literary critics think badly of the book because it was simply too popular when it came out.
Through the years, people have wondered what Stowe was trying to say with the novel.
Some of her themes can be seen easily, like the evil of slavery.
However, some themes are harder to see.
For example, Stowe was a Christian and active abolitionist, and put lots of her religious beliefs in her book.
Some have said that Stowe wrote in her novel what she thought was a solution to the problem that worried many people who did not like slavery.
This problem was: was doing things that were not allowed justified if they did it to fight evil?
Was it right to use violence to stop the violence of slavery?
Was breaking laws that helped slavery right?
Which of Stowe's characters should be followed: the patient Uncle Tom or the defiant George Harris?
Stowe thought that God's will would be followed if each (every) person sincerely (truly) examined his principles and acted on (followed) them.
People have also thought Uncle Tom's Cabin expressed the ideas of the Free Will Movement.
In this idea, the character of George Harris symbolizes the free labor.
The complex character of Ophelia shows the Northerners who allowed slavery, even though they did not like it.
Dinah is very different from Ophelia.
She acts by passion.
In the book, Ophelia changes.