From: David Parker (cdickens@RMPLC.CO.UK)
Date: Mon Jan 18 1999 - 02:36:33 PST
My dear Mr Farmer, I understand my good friend Forster has already communicated with you about this matter. As for my broad intentions in visiting the United States, they were chiefly to find whatever I might find. I had hoped to find carping critics of your country, in its youth, wrong, but didn't entirely do so. I tried to strike a balance of criticism and commendation in my book "American Notes." Later experiences of your country convinced me that many of the things I complained of your countrymen had emended of their own volition. Faithfully yours, Charles Dickens ______________________________________________________ -----Original Message----- From: Jeffrey S. Farmer <af369@ACORN.NET> To: BOZ@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU <BOZ@MAELSTROM.STJOHNS.EDU> Date: 15 January 1999 22:59 Subject: Visiting the United States, 1842 >Dear Mr. Dickens, > >You might be interested to learn, if you do not already know, that Eastern >State Penitentiary in Philadelphia, which you visited in 1842 and >described so vividly in your book, American Notes, still stands. It last >housed prisoners in the early 70s. (The early 1970s, that is.) After >several years of neglect, it has been preserved and reopened as an >historic site. > >The Penitentiary has, like you, a "presence" on the Internet--a website at >http://www.libertynet.org/e-state/. Part of the site is a history of the >Penitentiary. It describes your visit as follows: > > [In 1842] Charles Dickens visits the United States to see Niagara Falls > and Eastern State Penitentiary. He will write later, "The System is > rigid, strict and hopeless solitary confinement, and I believe it, in > its effects, to be cruel and wrong...." > >This seems to be a rather incomplete description of your reasons for >visiting the United States. Can you please tell us what you expected to >see and do there? And tell us, perhaps, how what you saw and did met with >your expectations? > >Thank you, > >Jeffrey S. Farmer >