American Notes For General Circulation

A travelogue detailing Charles Dickens’s tour of North America In January of 1842, Charles Dickens and his wife, Kate, traveled from Liverpool to Boston. At the time, Dickens had already attained a tremendous level of literary success and fame, and the author hoped his travels would help him gain insight into the New World that had captivated the English imagination. Over the ensuing 6 months, Dickens explored the East Coast and Great Lakes regions of the United States and Canada, observing life on the opposite side of the Atlantic from a distinctly British viewpoint. By turns humorous, critical, witty, and incisive, this travelogue is a unique and keen look at 19th-century North America. This ebook has been professionally proofread to ensure accuracy and readability on all devices.

Since the voyage of Columbus in search of the New World, and of Raleigh in quest of El Dorado, no visit to America has excited so much interest and conjecture as that of the author of "Oliver Twist." . . . In the mean time the book, however disconcerting to those persons who had looked for something quite different, will bring no disappointment to such as can be luxuriously content with good sense, good feeling, good fun, and good writing. The information, with few exceptions, might be gained much more advantageously from the map and gazetteer. The perusal of them has served chiefly to lower our estimate of the man, and to fill us with contempt for such a compound of egotism, coxcombry, and cockneyism. . . . We have never read a book, professing to give an account of any country, which, in respect to its natural features, its towns and cities, its manners and customs, its social, civil, and religious institutions—in short, in respect to everything about which the reader wishes to receive information, or at least to ascertain the opinions of the author, is so profoundly silent as the book before us.

American Notes for General Circulation. Charles Dickens (1812-1870) is best remembered today for the novels which offer a fantastic, even grotesque panorama of Victorian life, but he was a journalist before he became a novelist. His travel writings have all the energy and urgency of journalism, and these two volumes, drawn from his experiences in a six-month tour between January and June 1842, are no exception. Dickens was already hugely popular with the American reading public, and he was lionised wherever he went, but the American Notes, and the American scenes in Martin Chuzzlewit, caused great controversy and were felt by many to insult the people and institutions of the United States. Dickens's dedication of American Notes, to 'those friends of mine in America... who, loving their country, can bear the truth when it is told good humouredly, and in a kind spirit' suggests that he was not surprised by this reaction.