ABSTRACT
The John Martin letter of 1849 was written from Brooklyn, New York, to London, and records the disappointment that was fairly common among those who had heard inflated accounts of America or had not heeded warnings. America had been overrated: ‘i have not found it as it was Represented to me’, Martin writes. Work was hard to find and he warns his reader that ‘before you take a step Consider it well’. Many letters in these volumes contain such cautions to avoid the kind of disappointment that Martin felt.
