American Notes

American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America in 1842. He traveled mainly on the east coast and Great Lakes area of both the United States and Canada, primarily by steamship, but also by rail and coach. While there he acted as a critical observer of these societies almost as if returning a status report on their progress. This can be compared to the style of his Pictures from Italy written four years later where he wrote far more like a tourist.

During his extensive itinerary he made a particular point of visiting prisons and mental institutions and even took a quick glimpse at the prairie. He also wrote merciless parodies of the manners of the locals, including, but not limited to, their tobacco spitting and rural conversations. Although generally impressed by what he found he could not forgive the continued existence of slavery in the United States, and the final chapters of the book are devoted to a criticism of the practice. He was also unhappy about copyright issues. Dickens by this time had become an international celebrity but owing to the lack of an international copyright law, bootleg copies of his works were freely available in North America and he could not abide losing money.

The book formed the basis for a 2005 authored documentary series by Miriam Margolyes, made by Lion TV for BBC Four, in which Margolyes revisited many of the places mentioned by Dickens.

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