Charles Dickens’ Stormy Crossing: The Rhetorical Voyage from Letters to American Notes

Abstract

Notes that Dickens used as source material for American Notes his letters home to such friends as John Forster. Compares passages from American Notes with their source in the letters and examines passages in the letters that do not appear in American Notes to demonstrate that, in preparing the book, Dickens’ movement away from the facilitative elements of the letter genre is a principal reason for the book’s less successful aspects.