Lecture exploring race depictions in American Notes

This lecture was presented at the Dickens Society Symposium, 2021. In this lecture, I explore how Dickens's descriptions of the African Americans in American Notes influenced Joseph Conrad's descriptions of Africans in Heart of Darkness. Although Heart of Darkness is a fictional novella, it is based upon Conrad's own travels in the Congo. Conrad read Dickens extensively, and through comparing the descriptions of Africans and African Americans in both texts, we can see how Dickens's authorial voice influenced Conrad's.