American Notes
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American Notes for General Circulation is a short travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America in 1842. He traveled mainly on the east coast and great lakes area of both the United States and Canada. While there he acted as a critical observer of these societies almost as if returning a status report on their progress. This can be compared to the style of his Pictures from Italy written four years later where he wrote far more like a tourist.
During his extensive itinerary he visited prisons and mental institutions and even took a quick glimpse at the prairie. He also wrote merciless parodies of the manners of the locals. Although impressed by what he found he could not forgive the continued existence of slavery in the United States but was also unhappy about piracy. Dickens by this time had become an international celebrity but owing to the lack of an international copyright law bootleg copies of his works were freely available in North America and he could not abide losing money.
