Having spent three weeks in Boston where he enjoyed an enthusiastic reception, Charles Dickens arrived on February 12, 1842, in South Street, Lower Manhattan, on the packet New York from New Haven. The city depressed him.
In his travelogue American Notes, he contrasted sun-filled Broadway with the filth of The Five Points. In the district’s narrow alleys the visitor was confronted with all that is “loathsome, drooping, and decayed.” Dickens described New York as a city of sunshine and gloom. [Read more…] about Gaslight Foster: Old New York Storyteller & Social Geographer
In this episode of Ben Franklin’s World, John Wood Sweet, a Professor of History at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and author of the book, 