Philadelphia: Charles Dickens Gives an 1842 Viewpoint

Charles Dickens

In 1842, Charles Dickens wrote a short summary of Philadelphia for the readers back home in London-

My stay in Philadelphia was very short, but what I saw of its society, I greatly liked. Treating of its general characteristics, I should be disposed to say that it is more provincial than Boston or New York, and that there is afloat in the fair city, an assumption of taste and criticism, savouring rather of those genteel discussions upon the same themes, in connection with Shakespeare and the Musical Glasses, of which we read in the Vicar of Wakefield.

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