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Foreign Visitors Interpret America 1800-1867

Foreign Visitors to Early America

The books below were authored by foreign visitors to the U.S. They described what they saw, recorded their reactions, and collected information for friends or reading audiences back home. All the works cover, at least in part, travels in the region of the Great Lakes States. Books are grouped below in the decades in which the American travel began.

1800s

Ashe, Thomas, Travels in America Performed in 1806: For the Purpose of Exploring the Rivers… (1808)
A contemporary reviewer said that the author’s attitude, “… aroused so much bitterness that Americans began to resent all British travelers…”

1810s

Fearon, Henry B., Sketches of America: A Narrative of a Journey of Five Thousand Miles… (1819)
Fearon went to the U.S., as a representative of 39 English families who were considering emigrating to the U.S. His assignment was to visit potential destinations and report back on occupational outlook, cost of living, quality of schools, availability of goods and services, and anything else that might be important for new immigrants of his class in their new environment. This book was initially that report, rewritten for publication.

See our post on Early Western Travel Accounts in 32 volumes

Flint, James, Letters from America: Containing Observations … (1822)
Flint was a Scottish economist who went to America to study prices, wages, land questions, and labor problems, but also found time to observe and report on many other subjects; economic and otherwise.

See our post about Memoirs by early Illinois pioneers

Fordham, Elias Pym, Personal Narrative of Travels in Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky… (1906)
Fordham went to the U.S. with the intention of staying as a settler, but changed his mind after about 18 months. A young engineer from a prosperous family, he seems to have ‘gone native’ during his stay in Illinois, living the life of a rough frontiersman. This is a collection of his letters home, published many years later.

See our post with Memoirs and Diaries from the Indiana Frontier

1820s

Trollope, Frances, Domestic Manners of the Americans (1832)
This was the author’s first of over 100 books. According to Wikipedia, this book “…created a sensation on both sides of the Atlantic, as Frances Trollope had a caustic view of the Americans and found America strongly lacking in manners and learning.” Like Ashe’s book many years before, Mrs. Trollope’s witty book made Americans suspicious of any British traveler seen taking notes.

See our post on Life on the River in Frontier Days

1840s

Dickens, Charles, American Notes for General Circulation (1855)
The great English novelist who authored A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations etc. traveled the U.S. early in his career and published this account shortly thereafter.

See our Anthropology in PDF books

1850s

Beste, J. Richard, The Wabash, Adventures of an English Gentleman’s Family in the Interior of America (1855)
A member of the English gentry, traveling in the 1850s with “a large family of children” as a result of which they were “…brought into contact with much of which a single male traveler hears and sees nothing.” He, “… endeavored to represent in his pages what they saw and felt; consequently, they must contain much that is personal; much that is light, frivolous, anecdotical; much also that is dark and sorrowing; for such was the course of our travels.”

See our Economics Books PDF

Bremer, Fredrika, America of the Fifties: Letters of Fredrika Bremer (1924)
Bremer was a popular Swedish novelist who was an intrepid traveler, describing her unusual observations and experiences in letters home.

Bird, Isabella Lucy, The Englishwoman in America (1856)
A young, well-to-do English lady traveled in the U.S. in 1854 with relatives. She wrote a steady stream of letters home to her friends, apparently without intending to make them public.

Shaw, James, Twelve Years in America: being observations on the Country … (1867)
Shaw was not exactly a traveler. He was an Irish minister who stayed in America for 12 years and got around a lot in his work with American churches. This book emphasizes American social issues with which he had become familiar.


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