'Silver sunshine'For some Dickens scholars, the "Quarrel With America" marks a significant shift in his work.
"Dickens had a traumatising experience in America," argues Prof Meckier. "He became less radical, less optimistic, and he downgraded his view of human nature."
Dickens expressed his darker world view in later novels such as
David Copperfield and
Bleak House.
But despite the "quarrel", these books sold as well as his early works. And it was the novelist's enduring popularity with American readers that eventually ended the dispute.
Towards the end of his life, Dickens began holding wildly popular public readings from works such as
A Christmas Carol.
He sent a scout to assess if the American public would react as well as his fans in England, and after getting favourable reports, he returned to the US in 1867 and 1868.
Dickens needn't have worried about his reception.
"To say that his audience followed him with delight hardly expresses the interest with which they hung upon his every word," wrote the Boston Journal.
"It was not Dickens, but the creation of his genius, that seemed to live and talk before the spectators."
Almost all of Dickens's American critics were won over by his performances, and the quarrel was declared to be over.
"Dickens' second coming was needed to disperse every cloud and every doubt," said the New York Tribune, "and to place his name undimmed in the silver sunshine of American admiration".
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