In 1842 when Charles Dickens visited North America, he was only twenty-nine years old and yet had already achieved superstar status. Everywhere he went in the young republic, the author was pressed by mobs wishing to catch a glimpse of Boz, to shake his hand, to beg for a lock of his hair, even to snatch a plug of fur from his bearskin coat. Dickens had travelled to the New World to discover America, but what he learned was that America had discovered him. Fairly early in his career Dickens thus achieved worldwide fame. As a young man he was fascinated by the American experiment, hoping to find in the United States a liberal democracy living up to its high ideals, but his visit to the States proved disappointing. While the Commonwealth of Massachusetts met with his approval for its innovative institutions and Boston seemed every bit the Athens of America, the rest of the country was not, in his words, ‘the Republic of my imagination’. Dickens could no longer in good conscience view America as a suitable destination for British emigrants. Directly after his trip, he wrote American Notes for General Circulation (1842) in which he levied much criticism against the country (and offered some praise, though that is largely forgotten in light of his jabs and stabs at American manners and institutions).