Reviews

American Notes and Pictures from Italy by Clarkson Stanfield, Charles Dickens, Samuel Palmer

smcleish's review

3.0

Neither of these travelogues are among Dickens' great works, but are worth reading if you like Dickens. American Notes, the longer, has more interest. It includes some funny passages (the scathing depiction of Washington political life, the hogs in New York streets), and shows what now seems a bizarre fascination with visiting prisons and asylums. The book concludes with one of Dickens' most heartfelt and fierce pieces of writing, a condemnation of the institution of slavery. Bolstered by a large number of extracts from actual documents he collected on his trip, he passionately attacks the the inhumanity of the treatment of slaves. This was quite a controversial thing to do - he notes that pro-slavery lobbying was strong enough that those opposed to it were drowned out in Washington if they dared raise the topic, and he adds a statement regretting that by attacking slavery he may lose friends made on the trip. Pictures From Italy is shorter and less interesting, but includes one of my favourite brief descriptions in Dickens' writing: a man carrying a large amount of firewood is like "Birnham Wood going for a winter walk".