ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of the book. The book examines Bird's published account of her travels in Colorado, A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains. It reviews the popular travel narratives and other writing about America against the backdrop of the turbulence of the 1830sa decade marked by vigorous debate about parliamentary reform and the expansion of the franchise, along with the ardent efforts of the Chartists to have a voice in the running of the nation. The book explains Dickens's imitation of or deviance from Basil Hall's New World travel book published just a few years earlier, and she finds evidence of the way in which the construction of the image of America took place through intertextuality in these travel accounts. It also examines Harriet Martineau's periodical writing on slavery. Much information and misinformation on American slavery was disseminated by British periodical publications of various political hues.
