And so begins the Douglas Muzzio’s essay on Dicken’s trip to America. And yet, since he brings up Dicken’s correct insistence on the protection of copyright (Dickens lost a fortune to pirates of his works), I will quote no more than the first paragraph in the sole hope that you will read the rest:

On February 12, 1842, after a triumphal three-week stay in Boston and gala receptions and dinners in Worcester, Springfield, and Hartford, Charles Dickens—universally known by his pseudonym, “Boz”—landed at South Street in lower Manhattan on the packet New York from New Haven. When he stepped off the boat with his wife, Catherine (Kate), Dickens was greeted by a throng of cheering admirers, whom the New York Herald described as “perfectly whirlwindish . . . a promiscuous assemblage of bipeds that covered the dock as barnacles a ship’s bottom.” The paper crowed: “At last Boz breathes the balmy atmosphere of the Queen City of the Empire State.”