Der junge Charles Dickens macht 1842 seine erste Reise in die USA und besucht mehrere Städte und Orte an der Ostküste.

Dies ist sein Reisebericht. Er ist mit dem was er sieht nicht besonders begeistert und beschreibt wie ihm Land, Einwohner und deren Benehmen missfallen.

He is not amused...

Charles Dickens' American Notes for General Circulation, a travelogue of his trip around the U.S. and Canada from January through June 1842, was not well-received in the United States. Dickens' views of America and Americans were generally not unfair, in fact, many of his observations were right on target. He did not neglect the many positive aspects of American life and society, but Americans of his day, by British standards, were coarse, dirty, ill-mannered, too familiar with strangers, and often downright belligerent. Dickens was astounded at the propensity of Americans to resort to violence over the most minor occurrences, but he saved his keenest arrow to pierce slavery. He lambasted the hypocrisy of a nation which boasted loudly of republican principles while resting in large part on a foundation of human bondage. This view was not a formula for popularity. No people anywhere like the self-deception inherent in their proclaimed values to be pointed out too explicitly. Even though Dickens' criticisms often carried a heady whiff of English middle-class snootiness, to American readers they cut a little too close to the bone.

American Notes for General Circulation is worth reading as a sharp-eyed glimpse into the antebellum era in America by a savvy observer. It is good Three Star material.

The famous quarrel between Charles Dickens and America. Can't say he didn't take on a worthy opponent...I mean, a whole country? Dickens, as usual, is larger than the life he portrays.

Though Dickens primarily made his views known through works of fiction, and many of his arguments with America were laid out similarly in Martin Chuzzlewit, it seems he couldn't keep from expounding upon those ideas in a full-blown work. As a whole, Dickens admires America and knows that America's brand of democracy is the future of democracy -- which scares him frightfully. Like a mother watching her child become an adult, he offers lots of criticism and advice. From a review:

""But on the other hand, his whole point against the American experiment was this -- that if it ignored certain ancient English contributions it would go to pieces for lack of them. Of these the first was good manners and the second individual liberty -- liberty, that is, to speak and write against the trend of the majority."

In a time when good manners have all but washed down the drain and certain political mindsets threaten to stifle the minority opinion, it is rather depressing to read this advice from the distant past. America, widely perceived as a rebellious child, makes good on her image once again. Perhaps, though, she'll make it through adolescence and see the wisdom in mother's advice.

American Notes for General Circulation by Charles Dickens

This book, by Charles Dickens tells his firsthand account of his travels to America in 1842. Dickens’s wit and descriptive prose makes this an enjoyable read. His description of traveling from Liverpool, England across the Atlantic on the Brittania Steam Paddle Wheel Boat, is so well written, the reader gets a firsthand experience of this journey and points beyond.

The ship landed in Halifax. Dickens then traveled by various means: steamship, canal boat, train, stagecoach to Boston, New York, Washington, Richmond, Baltimore, Cincinnati, St. Louis, Niagara Falls, across Lake Erie to Montréal, Québec, back to New York, then West Point back to New York and then going across the Atlantic to England. In this book, he candidly discusses his travel experiences to many of the sites and places he visited. He provides his candid and often not complementary opinion on 1842 America: its institutions, customs, travel accommodations, government, and the political climate. He mentions many landmarks/institutions such as Shaker religious communities, Perkins School for the Blind in Boston, Eastern State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, and the U.S Congress to name a few.
His thoughts on the U.S Congress and Washington, DC:

“I saw in them the wheels that move the meanest perversion of virtuous Political Machinery that the worst tools ever wrought. Despicable treachery at elections under-handed tamperings with public officers; cowardly attacks upon opponents, scurrilous newspapers for shields and hired pens for daggers shameful truckling mercenary knaves whose claim to be considered, is that every day and week they sell new crops of ruin with their virile types which are the dragon’s teeth of yore… such things as these and in a word dishonest faction in its most depraved and most unblemished form stared out from every corner of the crowded hall”
It is the game of these men, and of their profligate organs, to make the strife of politics so fierce and brutal, and so destructive of all self-respect in worthy men, that sensitive and delicate minded persons shall be felt aloof and they, and such as they, be left to battle their selfish views unchecked.”

It seems like not much has changed over 180+ years.

"As Washington may be called the headquarters of tobacco teen shared saliva, the time is come when I must confess without any discussed that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable and soon became most offensive and sickening."

"In all public places of America, this filthy custom is recognized. In the courts of law, the judge has his spittoon, the crier has his, the witness has his and the prisoner has his; while the jury men and spectators are provided for, as so many men who in the course of nature must desire to spit incessantly”

Each year, I make an effort to read at least one book written in the 19th century. This completes my requirement for 2024. I gave this book a three-star rating. If you’re interested in learning about 19th-century travel in America, this is worthwhile to read.

While mostly a benign travelogue of Dickens' first trip to America in 1842, this book created quite a stir when published because of the two chapters criticizing the slavery and violence in our country at the time. It's not a stretch to think that he'd be similarly appalled today by the racism and violence that still persists in America, 175 years later.

This was the last book I needed to read to complete the Back to the Classics Challenge 2015 hosted at the blog Books and Chocolate. The category in this case was a Non-Fiction Classic. I am a big fan of Dickens’ fiction and I know that much of this U.S. visit served as an inspiration for part of Martin Chuzzelwit, which was the first Dickens’ novel I ever read, so I was keen to check this title out. Generally I liked it, but I still prefer his fiction. Famously American Notes engendered quite a bit of controversy and ill-feeling on this site of the Atlantic at the time it was published. However, as an American reading this over 150 years later, I don’t feel that Dickens’ was particularly unfair or even mean-spirited in his critiques of the U.S. A lot of what he found distasteful: the obsession with money, regardless of whether it was earned honestly or not, the obsession with partisan politics, etc. has not changed much in the intervening century and a half.

This book is not an easy read, but it was a fun read if you enjoy the insight you will receive from his astute observations and editorial comment.
As I read this book it struck me that “the more things change, the more they stay the same”. Gun and Knife Violence prevailed (perhaps not surprising in America in 1842 – except that Dickens travelled only in the Eastern states, not the Wild West). Violence was employed to settle even petty differences between angry men. Dickens includes newspaper accounts of the time detailing these attacks, often resulting in death of one or both parties. It may explain how prevalent gun culture remains in the American psyche.
I was also struck by his observations of the corrupt dealings of the politicians, and his abhorrence and condemnation of the slavery he experienced everywhere. I laughed at his depiction of men spitting their tobacco juice everywhere, while completely ignoring spittoons provided for the purpose.
I truly enjoyed reading about Dicken’s depictions of the various modes of travel: the lengthy boat trip across the ocean, stagecoaches hindered by mud up to the wheel wells; steamboats – particularly the method used to provide sleeping quarters by night and lounge/eating areas by day.
His depictions of the scenery as he passed made me feel depressed. No “Little House on the Prairie” being described here – he thought the poor settlers, bogged down in swampy ground with stumps all ‘round were as dismal as anything he had seen among the poor folk in England.
He spent a lot of time visiting prisons, poor-houses, and asylums. For the most part he thought these institutions were doing a good job.
Dickens was enthralled (when not appalled) by the Americans he met. He keeps comparing them to the English, where really there is no comparison. I took it slow, as each paragraph must be savored to be well-understood. It is not a book to race through. Now I can hardly wait to read his “Pictures from Italy” which is bound into the same volume of The Oxford Illustrated Dickens.

If one truly wishes to behold that wide expanse of partly-tamed frontier, which we call America, in the year of eighteen hundred and forty-two; with all its indomitable rivers and patient streams coursing purposefully throughout, dragging with their current the several floating boxes that Americans call "boats," and upon the same the hopes and dreams of that hardy people who would travel in them, seeking better fortunes beyond the horizon; with all its smartly built edifices, brightly colored with clean paint and bespeckled with gilded lettering advertising the services available within; with its many harrowing modes of travel, devised by that adventuresome people who push ever onward into the mires of the thick and primordial wilderness; and yes, with all of its amusing customs of suppering before sunset, and consuming the repast in meditative silence: if one truly wishes this, then he should read this book, though it be a thing of almost lilliputian curiosity, that it be so small a volume and yet contain passages of such enormous construction.

Seriously, the entire book is like that.

La visión del gran novelista del 'gran país'

I think you have to start with the understanding that this is a non-fiction piece, and perhaps cut the guy some slack because he wasn’t a non-fiction writer. Sure, sure, he started out that way, but really even by the time he got to “Sketches by Boz” he was a fiction writer. And while he may have done research for the subsequent novels, there’s a big difference between that and writing non-fiction.

As such, I think he was presented with the problem of how to talk about what he was seeing. On top of that is the fact that whatever opinion the US public had of Dickens – one they probably confused with the narrator of the books – there was no way they were going to be pleasantly surprised with the real man. Especially since he was more than a bit of a snob where Americans were concerned, and as he grew horrified by their inability to treat him, or anyone as far as he could tell, as their social superior.

On the other hand, he didn’t really make it easier on himself. I mean, when you go on vacation to a new country, is your first stop the prisons, lunatic asylums and homes for the blind? I know, I know, he visited these places in England as well, and it was fashionable to do so. But come on. America is waiting to see what the great man will say about their nation – and he paints them a picture of morons, thieves and madmen. I’m not saying we’re not – I’m just saying you can’t paint that picture and expect to be cheered.

There is the outside chance that Dickens was doing all this on purpose, of course. He’d been fighting with American publishers for years about the fact that they infringed the copyright of all his books, and that he never saw a penny from all the US sales of his work. And this was a point he made time and again in speeches on his tour. So it is possible that he was intentionally writing a book that he felt would not have a market in the US – the logic being – well, if they won’t pay me for what I write anyway, I might as well write something they won’t publish.

Unfortunately, they did.

Will this keep me from reading more Dickens? Hardly. But I can heartily recommend that unless you’re a scholar of the era or the great man, I think you can pass this book by.

One side note – apparently while Dickens was in Baltimore he met briefly in his rooms with a young American author. The two did not hit it off, though both were quite cordial and polite. The author? Edgar Allan Poe.

This is a travelogue recorded on a trip Dickens took to the United States. Interestingly, after a lighthearted and exaggerated story of the adventure of crossing, the visit focuses on hospitals, homes for deaf, blind and finally, prisons. This seemed like he was traveling as a journalist writing for serialized publication - which he may have been. Never the less, he describes where he stays and the people he meets which is delightful. The last quarter of the book is less focused as he travels west and then through Canada for his own enjoyment. At the end, Dickens returns to the serious tone of the earlier part of the book with a diatribe against slavery and guns.

I enjoy Dickens' style and it was delightful to hear him refer to American cities and towns I know and would have never imagined him visiting. Of course there must have been 19th century Englishmen who visited the states, but I kept giggling imagining Bob Cratchet of Camden Town rambling through Washington appalled by slavery and the spitting of tobacco chewing politicians. The contrast of the worlds I associate Dickens with made his portrait of America come alive in ways I am sure he never expected.

Frequently history and historical accounts are stranger than fiction. It's not that this particular travelogue is strange, but if this had been fiction, it wouldn't have more entertaining.

30 year old Charles Dickens visits America in 1842.