" Dickens did not like America on his initial visit in the early 1840s. He describes his disgust at seeing herds of pigs roaming the streets of New York, expresses doubts about the climate of Washington, D.C., decries the national habit of spitting tobacco, and insists that he condemns American politics and the American press in order to make "the Truth" generally known. His denunciation of (almost) all things American was re-imagined in his novel, Martin Chuzzlewit, in which he sends his main character to a Jamestown-esque swamp apparently located in the middle of Ohio (where the character sickens, nearly dies, and comes to an appreciation of his superior British identity.) The novel is funny; this book was not. Dickens is pompous and judgmental, very much a mid-Victorian male. In this book one is forced to spend a great deal of time with him, which I did not particularly enjoy. For example - on the stormy passage over, Dickens explains that the terrible weather had an upside in that his wife was too ill to talk to him. Ugh. "
— Mary, 2/17/2014