Coming and Going to Zion: An Analysis of Push and Pull Factors Motivating British Latter-day Saint Emigration, 1840–60

Authors

Samuel Benson

Keywords

British Latter-day Saint Emigration, emigration, Charles Dickens

Abstract

In 1863, acclaimed British writer Charles Dickens boarded a New York–bound emigrant ship docked at Liverpool. He was not a passenger but an observer; the subjects of his study were more than eight hundred Latter-day Saint emigrants aboard the ship Amazon. Dickens’s stated purpose, as he later wrote in The Uncommercial Traveller, was “to bear testimony against them if they deserved it,” but to his surprise, he instead found “the pick and flower of England.” Dickens lauded the Latter-day Saints’ politeness and their “aptitude for organisation,” and he praised their leader, Apostle George Q. Cannon. By the end of his visit, Dickens found it “impossible to deny that, so far, some remarkable influence had produced a remarkable result, which better known influences have often missed.”

Recommended Citation

Benson, Samuel (2023) "Coming and Going to Zion: An Analysis of Push and Pull Factors Motivating British Latter-day Saint Emigration, 1840–60," BYU Studies Quarterly: Vol. 62: Iss. 4, Article 5.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/byusq/vol62/iss4/5