American Notes for General Circulation (Penguin English Library) - Softcover

Charles Dickens

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0140430776 ISBN 13: 9780140430776

Publisher: Penguin Books, 1974

Synopsis

The New World had caught the English imagination, and its democratic promise had become such a hotly disputed issue that Dickens, who went to America in 1842, was only the most celebrated of many travellers curious to find out what was happening there.

About this title

About the Author

Charles Dickens was born on February 7, 1812, in Landport, Portsea, England. He died in Kent on June 9, 1870. The second of eight children of a family continually plagued by debt, the young Dickens came to know not only hunger and privation,but also the horror of the infamous debtors’ prison and the evils of child labor. A turn of fortune in the shape of a legacy brought release from the nightmare of prison and “slave” factories and afforded Dickens the opportunity of two years’ formal schooling at Wellington House Academy. He worked as an attorney’s clerk and newspaper reporter until his Sketches by Boz (1836) and The Pickwick Papers (1837) brought him the amazing and instant success that was to be his for the remainder of his life. In later years, the pressure of serial writing, editorial duties, lectures, and social commitments led to his separation from Catherine Hogarth after twenty-three years of marriage. It also hastened his death at the age of fifty-eight, when he was characteristically engaged in a multitude of work.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Books
• Publication date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0140430776
• ISBN 13: 9780140430776
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368