Under America’s sign: two nineteenthcentury British readings

Rather than emphasizing British anti-Americanism during the nineteenth century, ‘Under America’s sign: two nineteenth-century British readings’ examines the ways in which British attitudes to America and its culture reflect ambivalence about Britain’s own place in the modern world. In order to illustrate how British identities were shaped in exchanges with America, the article concentrates on two texts: Charles Dickens’s American Notes for General Circulation (1842) and Charles Wentworth Dilke’s Greater Britain (1868). ‘America’ is thus seen as a space marked not by ‘otherness’ or sheer difference, but by the differences of proximity, in-between-ness, or kinship.