Dickens, Charles — American Notes for General Circulation

New York, Harper & Brothers, 1842. Reprint Edition. Softcover. Size: 8vo 8" - 9" tall. My copy of William Clyde Wilkins' First and Early American Editions of the Works of Charles Dickens (1910, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, privately printed), being a Presentation Copy to A. Edward Newton (!), on p. 24, says "Harper & Brothers, of New York, also published an edition [of this volume] in November, 1842. It was an octavo pamphlet, 92 pages, printed in double columns, with brown paper covers." Indeed. Missing wraps, begins with title page. Heavily toned, a bit soiled to rear panel with a couple of ink blotches and on fore-edge middle. Disbound from a larger volume, stitches evident at spine, some loss of paper thereat. Else an eminently readable account type-set in a small font of Mr. Dickens' trip to the U.S. aboard the H.M.S. Britannia and thence down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers (and horrifyingly so in parts, covering the American South slave states by means of a brief stay in Richmond, Virginia). He writes of his seasickness and the bar fights he witnessed, of the abominable treatment by white Americans of black, of industry and of other writers, of Boston, Cincinnati, New York and New Orleans, of prisons and poor-house, cotton-fields and manufacturing plants. All in, a Very Good condition exemplar of an early reprint of a valuable work by the beloved British writer. Two prior editions were published literally the day prior by two different American newspapers (Wilkins). 92 pp.Member, I.O.B.A., C.B.A., and adherent to the highest ethical standards. . . . Fair