This 165-page book takes the eleven chapters of Stowe's novel in which Eva appears and publishes them as ten. Just under half Stowe's text is left out. Little is added, but an exception is the passage on pages 4-5 where Knowles borrows a passage from Stowe's Chapter 4 to describe Tom and then briefly explains how he came to be on the same riverboat as Eva.

  In this format, Tom thus becomes a character in Eva's story, which may raise a question. As Stowe says in Chapter 19 (Chapter 4 below), "There is a danger that our humble friend Tom be neglected amid the adventures of the higher born." That Knowles could turn the text into the story of Eva and her family so easily suggests the extent to which Stowe herself may have allowed the St. Clares to displace or marginalize the novel's anti-slavery agenda.

  At least two other volumes were subsequently published in this series: The Story of Little Tom and Maggie from The Mill on the Floss of George Eliot (1903) and The Story of Little Peter from the Peter Simple of Captain Marryat (1904).

The Harry Birdoff Collection,
Harriet Beecher Stowe Center, Hartford CT