American Notes for General Circulation - Softcover

Dickens, Charles

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1406800570 ISBN 13: 9781406800579

Publisher: Echo Library, 2006

Synopsis

The most comfortable of all the hotels of which I had any experience in the United States, and they were not a few, is Barnum's, in that city: where the English traveller will find curtains to his bed, for the first and probably the last time in America (this is a disinterested remark, for I never use them); and where he will be likely to have enough water for washing himself, which is not at all a common case.

About this title

About the Author:

Charles John Huffam Dickens ( 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded as the greatest novelist of the Victorian era. His works enjoyed unprecedented popularity during his lifetime, and by the twentieth century critics and scholars had recognised him as a literary genius. His novels and short stories enjoy lasting popularity. Born in Portsmouth, Dickens left school to work in a factory when his father was incarcerated in a debtors' prison. Despite his lack of formal education, he edited a weekly journal for 20 years, wrote 15 novels, five novellas, hundreds of short stories and non-fiction articles, lectured and performed extensively, was an indefatigable letter writer, and campaigned vigorously for children's rights, education, and other social reforms.

From the Inside Flap:

In American Notes Dickens recorded his reactions to the most exciting social experiment of his day.

The New World had caught the English imagination, and its democratic promise had become such a hotly disputed issue that Dickens, who went to America in 1842, was only the most celebrated of many travellers curious to find out what was happening there.

Here he discusses everything from the comically uncomfortable sea voyage to American schools and prisons, character and table manners. On the whole he disliked what he saw, and wrote so frankly about it that American Notes was deplored by the New York Herald as "the essence of balderdash ... reduced to the last drop of silliness and inanity". With hindsight, the Notes can be read as the account of a fascinating and traumatic adventure from which Dickens emerged, both emotionally and politically, a changed man.

About this edition

• Publisher: Echo Library
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1406800570
• ISBN 13: 9781406800579
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192