American Notes for General Circulation

Charles Dickens arrived in America in 1842 expecting the great experiment in democracy. He left five months later deeply disillusioned. American Notes for General Circulation is the result: not the glowing travelogue America expected from England's most famous novelist, but a wry, often scalpel-sharp account of a society that fascinated and repelled him in equal measure. Dickens spares no detail, from the chaos of American dining to the horror of Southern slavery, from the rough manners of strangers to the relentless worship of the dollar. His observations are sharp, often very funny, sometimes uncomfortable. America hated it. But it remains a remarkable document of a brilliant mind encountering a young nation grappling with its own contradictions, and it paved the way for Martin Chuzzlewit, where Dickens would channel his American disappointment into fiction.