Star-Spangled Eden: 19th Century America Through the Eyes of Dickens, Wilde, Frances Trollope, Frank Harris, and Other British Travelers

During the 19th century, the English loved traveling in America almost as much as elite Americans loved making the tour in Europe. Travel journalist Simmons (Americans: The View from Abroad, etc.) leads readers on a lively and engrossing romp across the continent, as seen by eight British travelers (who, happily, all kept detailed logs of their stay in America). Frances Trollope's Domestic Manners of the Americans became a bestseller in England, but was reviled in the U.S.--Trollope was none too sympathetic to the Yankees, who in her eyes were little more than uncivilized boors. (She was especially repulsed by Americans' lack of table manners.) Fanny Kemble, an English actress who married a Georgia planter, published her journal of the two years she spent as plantation mistress (the marriage ended in disaster, and Kemble returned to England as an outspoken abolitionist). In American Notes, Charles Dickens made many negative observations about America--its penal system was too harsh, journalists were unscrupulous--but he admired American men's gallant and gentlemanly treatment of women. Richard Burton wrote a detailed account of his stay with Mormons in Utah, and was tolerant of polygamy. Simmons's final chapter--on Oscar Wilde--does not live up to the rest of the book; Simmons is more interested in showing how Americans responded to Wilde than the other way around. On the whole, though, this is an entertaining, if occasionally superficial, look at America through travelers' eyes. (May)