Book description
Penguin Classics e-books give you the best possible editions of
Charles Dickens's works, including useful and informative
introductions, the definitive, accurate text as it was meant to be
published, a chronology of Dickens's life and notes that fill in the
background to the book.
When Charles Dickens set out for America in 1842 he was the most
famous man of his day to travel there - curious about the
revolutionary new civilization that had captured the English
imagination. His frank and often humorous descriptions cover
everything from his comically wretched sea voyage to his sheer
astonishment at the magnificence of the Niagara Falls, while he also
visited hospitals, prisons and law courts and found them exemplary.
But Dickens's opinion of America as a land ruled by money, partly
built on slavery, with a corrupt press and unsavoury manners, provoked
a hostile reaction on both sides of the Atlantic. American
Notes is an illuminating account of a great writer's revelatory
encounter with the New World.
Charles Dickens (1812-70) was a political reporter and journalist
whose popularity was established by the phenomenally successful
PICKWICK PAPERS (1836-7). His novels captured and held the public
imagination over a period of more than thirty years. He is considered
one of the greatest novelists in the English language.
Patricia Ingham is Fellow of St Anne's College, Reader in English,
and The Times Lecturer in English at the University of Oxford.
