Lost in the American City: Dickens,James,and Kafka

Jeremy Tambling looks at European-formed reactions to America and American cities in the 19th century. Dickens visited America in 1842 and his American Notes and Martin Chuzzlewit set the agenda for future discussions of America. Tambling looks at the Dickens legacy through Henry James in The American Scene, through H.G. Wells in The Future in America, and through Kafka in The Man Who Was Never Heard of Again. Lost in the American City explores the changes in American 19th century urban culture which made America so different and so impossible to map, and which made American modernity so unreadable and challenging.

Author Biography: Jeremy Tambling is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Hong Kong, and author of Henry James: Critical Issues.