Charles Dickens · 1842 · overland

Charles Dickens' travel book of 1842, recording the wildly popular novelist's first tour of America. Lionized everywhere he went, Dickens grew steadily more disillusioned, repelled by the spitting, the slavery, and the hounding of the press. His circuit ran from Boston through New York and Washington to the slave country of Virginia, west to the great rivers, out to the prairie, and back by way of Niagara and Canada.

1. 1
   Boston

   Dickens lands to a rapturous welcome, the most famous writer in the world at the height of his fame.

2. 2
   New York

   Feted everywhere, though appalled by the slums of Five Points and the eerie silence of its prison.

3. 3
   Washington

   The capital, with its tobacco-spitting congressmen and the institution of slavery close at hand.

4. 4
   Richmond

   South into Virginia, where the sight of slavery so sickens him that he turns back.

5. 5
   Pittsburgh

   West over the Alleghenies by canal boat to the head of the Ohio.

6. 6
   Cincinnati

   Down the Ohio by steamboat through the river towns.

7. 7
   St Louis

   To the Mississippi and St Louis, and a melancholy excursion onto the Looking-Glass Prairie.

8. 8
   Niagara Falls

   Back north at last to Niagara, whose falls leave even Dickens lost for words.

9. 9
   Quebec

   And into Canada, to Montreal and Quebec, before the long sail home.