The case of Charles Dickens's journalism and fiction that concerned times and places other than than London and England from which he made a unique imaginative world should help us consider the phenomenon of "dislocation" in writing. Dickens wrote in and about America and Italy, turned from his familiar present or immediate past to England in the 18th Century, and moved into the supernatural in his Christmas Books at a key point in his career. Were these distractions, tangents, or crucial stages for him? What relations can we discover between his novels and travel (literal and figurative) writings? Texts will include Barnaby Rudge, Martin Chuzzlewitt American Notes, Pictures from Italy, and Christmas Books.