| 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 piracy. 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.
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