La Choza de Tom ó Sea Vida de los Negros en el sur de Los Estados Unidos, Novela Escrita en Ingles por Enriqueta Beecher Stowe..

Madrid: Imprenta de Ayguals de Izco Hermanos, 1852. Small quarto. 476, [4], [2, (blank)] pages. Quarter leather spine, patterned boards. Binding with general rubbing; small expert tissue mend near title-page gutter; very good.

The rare first Spanish edition of Uncle Tom's Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896), published in the same year as the first American edition.

This Madrid edition was published and translated by Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco, the social critic, progressive reformer, and highly-influential novelist and publisher.

Aygual explicitly imported Stowe's book into Spain as an abolitionist novel with an intent to effect social change. The perception of its publication by Spanish authorities was immediate and significant; they deemed it to be a subversive text and placed it on the Index of Prohibited Books. (Surwillo)

"Stowe's explosive bestseller was unequaled in its rate of diffusion. Strictly in terms of numbers of readers, the impact of this text was phenomenal. Within six weeks of its initial offering in December 1852, readers purchased all four thousand copies of Wenceslao Ayguals de Izco's translation..." (ibid.)

Surwillo continues: "The clamorous reception of Uncle Tom's Cabin in Spain was unique; even most surprising, it took place during a period of intense censorship of fiction and commentary about the overseas provinces and the slaves that lived there [...] The American fictional landscape of Tío Tom offered rich and fertile ground for a transplanted consideration of the urgent affairs of Spain's own slave traffic, precarious imperial unity, and concerns about abolition." (ibid.)

Ref. [Lisa Surwillo within:] Mihaylova and Davis, editors, Uncle Tom's Cabins: The Transnational History of America's Most Mutable Book (2018). The first Spanish-language translation was published by Andrés Avelino de Oriheula. It appeared in December of 1852, two months before Ayguals de Izco's competing translation, but it was published in Paris, not Spain. (David Luis-Brown) Hildreth, p60. Sabin 92610 -"The first editions were published in 1852 in Madrid and Paris." In America, OCLC 43345516: UC, Davis, Amherst College, Smith College, University of Michigan Library, Princeton. No copies recorded at auction.