The story began its appearance in the _National Era_, June 5, 1851, and was announced to run for three months, but as it was allowed to take its own course it was not actually concluded until April of the next year. Although it had already attracted the widest attention, the question of publication in book form was in some doubt until it was undertaken by an obscure Boston firm, and the outcome was so uncertain that the Stowes did not dare to assume half the risk of publication for a prospect of half the proceeds. Three thousand copies were sold on the day of issue, and three hundred thousand in America within the first year. In England, also, after an initial hesitation, reprinting was soon started, and by the close of the year eighteen different houses had put on forty editions, and in the end a million and a half copies were circulated in Great Britain and the colonies.[23] Mrs. Stowe's "fortune was made" of course; but of quite as much moment to her was the fact that her influence was made in the great fight in which she was enlisted. In 1853 she sailed for what turned out to be a sort of triumphal tour in Great Britain, in the course of which large sums of money were given her for use in antislavery outlay. Leading men and women, who had been formerly indifferent, became through her book secondary sources of influence. Moreover, there was value even in the opposition she had aroused. Whittier wrote to Garrison: "What a glorious work Harriet Beecher Stowe has wrought. Thanks for the Fugitive Slave Law! Better would it be for slavery if that law had never been enacted; for it gave occasion for 'Uncle Tom's Cabin.'" And Garrison wrote in turn to Mrs. Stowe: "I estimate the value of anti-slavery writing by the abuse it brings. Now all the defenders of slavery have let me alone and are abusing you." The volume of objection was so great and so much of it was directed at the honesty of the work that the author reluctantly compiled soon after a "Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin," in which she presented documentary evidence for every kind of fact used in the story; and of this she was able to write: "Not one fact or statement in it has been disproved as yet. I have yet to learn of even an _attempt_ to disprove." [23] In view of the lack of any copyright protection it is interesting to record that three of the London publishers offered Mrs. Stowe an interest in the sales of their editions.