美国纪行 (1842)

《美国纪行》（英语：American Notes）是英国作家查尔斯·狄更斯于1842年出版的游记，叙述他在美国旅行的所见所闻，除此之外还批评和暗讽了美国社会的各种黑暗现象，如贫富差距、奴隶制度等。他在本书的结语表示：“我一开始的时候，就把后面这一句话当作我唯一的目标：那就是，我写到什么地方，也把读者老老实实带到什么地方；这个目标可以说达到了。”

狄更斯在1842年当年第一次造访美国，他每到一个城市都几乎会参观当地的政府机构和公共设施，以了解当地居民的生活；虽然他在美国受到了热烈欢迎，但仍对美国感到失望。

American Notes for General Circulation is a travelogue by Charles Dickens detailing his trip to North America from January to June 1842. While there he acted as a critical observer of North American society, almost as if returning a status report on their progress. This can be compared to the style of his Pictures from Italy written four years later, where he wrote far more like a tourist. His American journey was also an inspiration for his novel Martin Chuzzlewit. 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. The American city he liked best was Boston – "the air was so clear, the houses were so bright and gay. [...] The city is a beautiful one, and cannot fail, I should imagine, to impress all strangers very favourably." Further, it was close to the Perkins Institution and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind where Dickens encountered Laura Bridgman, who impressed him greatly.

Background

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.

Arriving in Boston on 22 January 1842, the author was at once mobbed. Dickens at first revelled in the attention, but soon the endless demands on his time began to wear on his enthusiasm. He complained in a letter to his friend John Forster:

I can do nothing that I want to do, go nowhere where I want to go, and see nothing that I want to see. 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. During his extensive itinerary, he made a particular point of visiting prisons and mental institutions and even took a quick glimpse at the prairie.

Among his early visits to American institutions, Dickens visited Perkins School for the Blind near Boston, where he met Laura Bridgman, who is considered the first deaf-blind person to receive a significant education in English. His account of this meeting in American Notes would inspire Helen Keller's parents to seek an education for their daughter.

He was particularly critical of the American press and the sanitary conditions of American cities. 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. 8 – Washington):

As Washington may be called the headquarters of tobacco-tinctured saliva, the time is come when I must confess, without any disguise, that the prevalence of those two odious practices of chewing and expectorating began about this time to be anything but agreeable, and soon became most offensive and sickening.

In Washington, D.C., he called upon President John Tyler in the White House, writing that:

... he looked somewhat worn and anxious, and well he might; being at war with everybody – but the expression of his face was mild and pleasant, and his manner was remarkably unaffected, gentlemanly, and agreeable. I thought that in his whole carriage and demeanour, he became his station singularly well.