American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America from January to June 1842.

Having arrived in Boston, he visited Lowell, New York, and Philadelphia, and travelled as far south as Richmond, as far west as St. Louis and as far north as Quebec.

On 3 January 1842, one month shy of his 30th birthday, Dickens sailed with his wife, Catherine, and her maid, Anne Brown, from Liverpool on board the steamship RMS Britannia bound for America.

If I turn into the street, I am followed by a multitude.He travelled mainly on the East Coast and the Great Lakes area of both the United States and Canada, primarily by steamboat, but also by rail and coach.

He also wrote merciless parodies of the manners of the locals, including, but not limited to, their rural conversations and practice of spitting tobacco in public (Ch.

I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanour, he became his station singularly well.Although generally impressed by what he found, he could not forgive the continued existence of slavery in the United States, which he described as "that most hideous blot and foul disgrace ..."[1] The final chapters of the book are devoted to a criticism of the practice.

[2] Dickens's letters home to his friends, including Forster and illustrator Daniel Maclise, helped to form the basis of the book.

Finally, in many places he finds standards of personal cleanliness and public health still very primitive and is particularly disgusted by the almost universal habit of spitting.