Charles Dickens and nineteenth-century America: 'The great actuality of the current imagination'

While many critics have examined Charles Dickens' view of America, there has been little work on nineteenth-century American views of Dickens. This dissertation will address this gap in Americanist criticism by explaining how Dickens' work, seemingly so rooted in English place and character, not only appealed to nineteenth-century American literary tastes, but resonated deeply within the culture itself. Writing about issues germane to English and American sensibilities, his fiction acts as both mirror and maker, reflecting and forming the cultural ideals of the period.;Divided into six chapters, this study will first examine the bibliographical trail of Dickens in nineteenth-century America, such as reprints of his novels in serial and book form, stage productions, interest in Dickens himself, and his visits. The five remaining chapters analyze Dickens through the dominant cultural perspectives affecting nineteenth-century American life. Chapter Two focuses on American attitudes toward religion and morality as reflected in Dickens' fiction, and concludes by examining The Christmas Carol in light of these perspectives. Chapter Three addresses American views of women and domesticity by positing two Dickens heroines, Dolly Varden from Barnaby Rudge and Esther Summerson from Bleak House, as early examples and reflections of the rise of Domestic fiction. Comparing these two heroines with their counterparts in American novels such as The Wide Wide World, The Lamplighter, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, illustrates the affinities between English and American beliefs in the role of women in society. Chapter Four, using The Old Curiosity Shop as a touchstone text explores the symbiotic connection between death and sentimentality, and Chapter Five, using Oliver Twist in a similar fashion, places Dickens' in the context of American sensationalist writings. Chapter Six concludes the dissertation by examining the way Dickens, in texts such as Hard Times and David Copperfield, was venerated as a Democratic writer, particularly for his role as a spokesperson for the working-class and his embrace of the myth of the "self-made man." Taken together, these chapters offer a paradigm for cultural criticism, illustrating how the reactions to a writer with the popularity of Dickens can reveal the outlines of a culture.