Charles Dickens Museum

About this place

Charles Dickens lived at 48 Doughty Street from 1837 to 1839, and the Georgian terraced house he rented is now the Charles Dickens Museum.

It stands in Bloomsbury, on the edge of King's Cross in the London Borough of Camden, and is the only one of Dickens's London homes still standing.

The Grade I listed building holds the world's most comprehensive collection of Dickens material, over 100,000 items including manuscripts, letters and personal effects.

Historic Houses supports the museum, though entry is not included in membership.

History

Dickens moved into the house a year after his marriage to Catherine Hogarth, and it was here that he completed The Pickwick Papers and wrote Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby. He left in December 1839 as his growing success allowed him to move his family to a larger house nearby. The building later opened as a museum and now serves as the headquarters of the international Dickens Fellowship.

Architecture

The museum occupies a standard Georgian terraced townhouse of the kind built across Bloomsbury in the early nineteenth century, its rooms arranged over four floors much as they would have been when Dickens and his young family lived there.

Worth knowing

The house is where Dickens became established as a writer and rose rapidly to international fame, and it remains a place of pilgrimage for readers, scholars and researchers from around the world. It also serves as the headquarters of the Dickens Fellowship, the international society devoted to his life and work.

Facilities