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Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Passage to America: Celebrated European Visitors in Search of the American Adventure

Passage to America: Celebrated European Visitors in Search of the American Adventure

Hardcover

General European HistoryGeneral United StatesGeneral World History

ISBN10: 1780760752
ISBN13: 9781780760759
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Published: Jun 6 2013
Pages: 304
Weight: 1.32
Height: 1.40 Width: 6.20 Depth: 9.00
Language: English

America was a source of fascination to Europeans arriving there during the course of the nineteenth century. At first glance, the New World was very similar to the societies they left behind in their native countries, but in many aspects of politics, culture and society, the American experience was vastly different - almost unrecognisably so - from Old World Europe. Europeans were astounded that America could survive without a monarch, a standing army and the hierarchical society which still dominated Europe. Some travellers, such as the actress Fanny Kemble, were truly convinced America would eventually revert to a monarchy; others, such as Frances Wright and even Oscar Wilde, took their opinions further, and attempted to fix aspects of America - described in 1827 by the young Scottish captain Basil Hall, as 'one of England's occasional failures'. Many prominent visitors to the United States recorded their responses to this emerging society in their diaries, letters and journals; and many of them, like the fulminating Frances Trollope, were brutally and offensively honest in their accounts of the New World.

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General United States