Editing Charles Dickens (section)

===First visit to the United States===
On 22 January 1842, Dickens and his wife arrived in [[Boston]], Massachusetts, aboard the [[RMS Britannia|RMS ''Britannia'']] during their first trip to the United States and Canada.<ref>{{cite news |last=Miller |first=Sandra A. |url=https://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2012/03/17/when-charles-dickens-came-boston/LwCtpA83DGQWqFfVEoyfZL/story.html |title=When Charles Dickens came to Boston |work=[[The Boston Globe]] |date=18 March 2012 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140214082528/http://www.bostonglobe.com/magazine/2012/03/17/when-charles-dickens-came-boston/LwCtpA83DGQWqFfVEoyfZL/story.html |archive-date=14 February 2014 |access-date=22 January 2019}}</ref> At this time [[Georgina Hogarth]], another sister of Catherine, joined the Dickens household, now living at Devonshire Terrace, [[Marylebone]] to care for the young family they had left behind.<ref>{{harvnb|Jones|2004|p=7}}</ref> She remained with them as housekeeper, organiser, adviser and friend until Dickens's death in 1870.<ref name="Smith10ff"/> Dickens modelled the character of [[Agnes Wickfield]] after Georgina and Mary.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=225–229}}</ref>
[[File:Charles Dickens sketch 1842.jpg|thumb|upright|left|Sketch of Dickens in 1842 during his first American tour. Sketch of Dickens's sister Fanny, bottom left]]

He described his impressions in a [[Travel literature|travelogue]], ''[[American Notes|American Notes for General Circulation]]''. In ''Notes'', Dickens includes a powerful condemnation of slavery which he had attacked as early as ''The Pickwick Papers'', correlating the emancipation of the poor in England with the abolition of slavery abroad<ref>{{harvnb|Moore|2004|pp=44–45}}</ref> citing newspaper accounts of runaway slaves disfigured by their masters. In spite of the abolitionist sentiments gleaned from his trip to America, some modern commentators have pointed out inconsistencies in Dickens's views on racial inequality. For instance, he has been criticised for his subsequent acquiescence in Governor [[Edward John Eyre|Eyre]]'s harsh crackdown during the 1860s [[Morant Bay rebellion]] in Jamaica and his failure to join other British progressives in condemning it.<ref>{{cite news |title=Marlon James and Charles Dickens: Embrace the art, not the racist artist |url=https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/10/marlon-james-and-charles-dickens |access-date=21 October 2015 |newspaper=[[The Economist]] |date=20 October 2015 |archive-date=21 October 2015 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151021125219/http://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/10/marlon-james-and-charles-dickens |url-status=live}}</ref> From [[Richmond, Virginia]], Dickens returned to Washington, D.C., and started a trek westward, with brief pauses in Cincinnati and Louisville, to St. Louis, Missouri. While there, he expressed a desire to see an American prairie before returning east. A group of 13 men then set out with Dickens to visit Looking Glass Prairie, a trip 30 miles into [[Illinois]].

During his American visit, Dickens spent a month in New York City, giving lectures, raising [[History of copyright law|the question of international copyright laws]] and the pirating of his work in America.<ref>{{harvnb|Ackroyd|1990|pp=345–346}}.</ref><ref>{{harvnb|Tomalin|2011|p=127}}.</ref> He persuaded a group of 25 writers, headed by [[Washington Irving]], to sign a petition for him to take to Congress, but the press were generally hostile to this, saying that he should be grateful for his popularity and that it was mercenary to complain about his work being pirated.<ref>{{harvnb|Tomalin|2011|pp=128–132}}.</ref>

The popularity he gained caused a shift in his self-perception according to critic Kate Flint, who writes that he "found himself a cultural commodity, and its circulation had passed out his control", causing him to become interested in and delve into themes of public and personal personas in the next novels.<ref name="flint35">{{harvnb|Flint|2001|p=35}}.</ref> She writes that he assumed a role of "influential commentator", publicly and in his fiction, evident in his next few books.<ref name="flint35"/> His trip to the US ended with a trip to Canada—Niagara Falls, Toronto, Kingston and Montreal—where he appeared on stage in light comedies.<ref>{{cite news |title=Charles Dickens in Toronto |url=https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/sites/fisher.library.utoronto.ca/files/halcyon_nov_1992.pdf |work=Halcyon: The Newsletter of the Friends of the [[Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library]] |publisher=University of Toronto |date=November 1992 |access-date=13 October 2017 |archive-date=14 October 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171014034207/https://fisher.library.utoronto.ca/sites/fisher.library.utoronto.ca/files/halcyon_nov_1992.pdf |url-status=dead}}</ref>