Description
Charles Dickens wrote this book after his American visit that he started in 1842, on a cold January day, accompanied by his wife Catherine Hogarth Dickens. The purpose of his trip was to visit their cousins, but the experience was also transposed into this really fascinating short account of the author`s time in the US.Dickens said both positive and negative things about America, with his characteristic literary charm and wit. He expresses his rage against slavery, the Americans’ obsession with doing business, their lack of imagination, the partisan American press and the Americans’ tendency towards distrusting everything.He visited several cities and different places: prisons and insane asylums in New York and Boston which was an occasion to express his belief that the insane should be treated better and the prisoners should not be worked harder. Passing through Louisville, Cincinnati, he complained about bold Americans and their condescendence to foreigners, as well as about the messy aspect of some of these cities. In St. Louis, he complained about people living an isolated life. He suffered because of the hot temperatures and the difficult traveling conditions that often made him feel miserable during his journey; he also hated the Americans’ practice of spitting tobacco juice everywhere, including inside official institutions. Dickens also criticized the lack of a copyright, expressing his concern that there is nothing to protect authors like him against those who wanted to steal their efforts. In Virginia, he expresses his greatest wrath for the slavery practiced at that time, which he considered a curse of the American life.Due to the fact that Dickens is critical (although he was equally critical of Great Britain!), the book was not exactly a success. He returned to America years later; the slavery had been abolished and he amended some of his previous criticism, probably realizing that some things take time to grow.
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