American Notes for General Circulation

Charles Dickens is considered to be one of the greatest British writers of all times. He was a social activist who wrote plays and novels during the Victorian period. His most famous novels include Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and David Copperfield. 'When Charles Dickens set out for America in 1842, he was the most famous man of his day to make the journey, and embarked on his travels with an intense curiosity about the revolutionary new civilization that had captured the English imagination. His frank and often humorous descriptions cover everything from his comically wretched sea voyage to his sheer astonishment at the magnificence of the Niagara Falls, while he also visited hospitals, prisons and law courts and found them exemplary. But Dickens's opinion of America as a land ruled by money, partly built on slavery, with a corrupt press and unsavoury manners, provoked a hostile reaction on both sides of the Atlantic.... [The] introduction ... examines the response the book received when it was published, and compares it with similar travel writings of the period and with Dickens's fiction'. -Back cover.