Dickens, Charles, travel writing

Abstract

Charles Dickens published full‐length travelogues, journalistic accounts of his trips within Britain and abroad, and depictions of travel in his novels. American Notes for General Circulation (1842) describes his first trip to the United States in 1842, and Pictures from Italy (1846) his travels and residence in Italy in 1844–45. These books were not travel guides, but rather chronicles of Dickens's impressions and experiences, including his opinions of the customs, cities, food arrangements for travelers, and political and religious institutions of the places he visited. In a series of articles in the 1860s in All the Year Round , Dickens adopted the persona of the “uncommercial traveller,” a sympathetic observer of the ways of life of ordinary people.