Charles Dickens vs. America

Charles Dickens's coffin was lowered into Westminster Abbey in 1870. He was 58. As the world mourned one of its most beloved authors, there were some who blamed his fatal illness on his gruelling reading tour in America a year and a half earlier. In John Forster's influential biography of Dickens, written within years of the funeral, he argued that the American trip pushed Dickens over the edge. Others described the author's cross-country book-peddling as "tragic".