Charles Dickens's American Audience

During the time when the American nation was emerging, the novels of a British author Charles Dickens contributed significantly to the making of American culture. The unique contribution of Charles Dickens's American Audience is the focus upon the testimony of Dickens's American readers as a unique "reading community": how his fiction intersected with their real lives, how he impacted American publishing, literacy, and educational reform, and how Americans loved the theatricality that Dickens brought to their lives.