HIST 92r: The Dickens Log

The goal of this project is to compile a day-by-day account of Charles Dickens’s travels through the United States in 1842. Dickens landed in Boston on January 22 and sailed back to England from New York on June 7. During this six-month trip, he wrote dozens of letters and, when he returned home, he wrote a narrative of his travels, published as American Notes (1842). He then revisited some of what he’d encountered in the United States in a novel, Martin Chuzzlewit (1844). While Dickens was in the United States, he met with nearly every American notable, from poets to presidents. His visit was written about in nearly every American newspaper and in many England papers as well. The work of this history lab is to create a database—as exhaustive as possible--of primary documents that chronicle Dickens’s trip. Those documents will include Dickens’ letters; Dickens’s other writings about America; the diaries, letters and reminiscences of Americans he met in 1842; newspaper and magazine accounts of Dickens’s travels; and engravings and daguerreotypes of the people he met, and the places he visited. Another goal of the project is to retrace Dickens’s steps, as exactly as possible, using historical maps, and steamboat, railroad, and stage routes and schedules. This element of the project may have a GIS component, keying Dickens’s route to Google Maps.