Charles Dickens Museum offers insight into life of literary legend

Charles Dickens Museum Overview

Charles Dickens Museum offers a chance to get to know the ins and outs of arguably Britain's finest author since Shakespeare. Lying behind the façade of a typical Georgian terraced house in Holborn lie an array of exhibitions in honour of Charles Dickens, one of London's great writers and resident of the property from 1837 to 1839, just as the Victorian era was getting underway.

The Charles Dickens Museum is the world's prime collection of material relating to the legendary realist author, who penned classic tales of suffering such as Oliver Twist and Hard Times, as well as lasting tales of intrigue, passion and coming-of-age like Great Expectations and David Copperfield. Victorian London – with its smelly streets, daunting prisons, splendid wealth and bitter poverty – is immortalised in the works of the great novelist, while the author's life is immortalised in the museum site.

Visitors get the chance to see the paintings, rare editions, manuscripts, furniture and daily items that shaped Dickens' life, all in the inspiring surroundings of his old home.

Charles Dickens Museum Location

The Charles Dickens museum is tucked away in the heart of Holborn at 48 Doughty Street and visitors will have to look hard to distinguish it from surrounding buildings – like the lives of the characters depicted by the writer, the museum site is typical of London and all it holds.

The museum can be accessed on the 7, 17, 19, 38, 45, 46, 55, 243 buses, while the nearest underground stations are Russell Square on the Piccadilly Line and Chancery Lane and Holborn on the Central Line.

For many though, the site will be best accessed on foot, allowing visitors to walk the surrounding streets as Dickens would have done. And a trip around the Holborn area will also yield plenty of recognisable sites for avid Dickens readers.

Nestled away nearby is Gray's Inn, one of the four Inns of Court where Dickens worked as a solicitor's clerk in 1828. And the writer brought the place to life in his later writings, situating the chambers of Pickwick's solicitor, Mr Perker, at Gray's Inn in classic tale The Pickwick Papers. Just down the road at Barnard's Inn, walkers can let their imaginations carry them back to the ambitions and torment of mid-Victorian London, when viewing the site of Pip and Herbert's chambers in Great Expectations. Also in the area are the Lincolns Inn Fields, home to the lawyer Tulkinghorn in Bleak House.

And only a stone's throw away is Fleet Street, another immortal location that marked the life of both Dickens and his characters. At the heart of the press industry, it was Fleet Street where Dickens learned his writing trade as a young reporter, while David Copperfield, takes Peggotty to see a Waxwork on Fleet Street.

Why Visit Charles Dickens Museum

Visitors will jump at the chance to visit the site of a crucial period in Dickens' life, when the young writer started to gain prosperity as The Pickwick Papers was successfully serialised. While his residency at Doughty Street was short, the novelist still managed to publish and complete some of his great works from the Holborn base, including Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby.

The Museum holds special exhibitions based around Dickens's life and works, while occasional displays by contemporary artists offer further dimensions and insights. Great Victorian Beards was one such fun exhibition in the past, while Dickens' Artistic Daughter also livened up the collection.

A current exhibition at the address is entitled Ignorance and Want: the social conscience of Charles Dickens – and allows visitors to explore the vivid heroes and villains of Dickens' life who inspired some of his most memorable characters. The generous Mr Brownlow – whose name remained the same in fictional form – is one of many fascinating figures on show.