Charles Dickens Museum London celebrates 100 years

Dickens in Doughty Street displays 100 objects to mark a century since the author’s first family home was rescued from demolition and became a museum.

As the only one of Dickens’ former homes open to the public, it holds the most comprehensive collection of treasures including the desk where he wrote Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities and Our Mutual Friend.

The study at 48 Doughty Street where a young Charles Dickens wrote Nicholas Nickleby and Oliver Twist including a desk from later in his life when he penned A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations. (Image: The Dickens Museum) When Dickens, his wife Catherine moved into the terraced house in Holborn in 1837, he was half way through his first novel.

By the time he left, two and a half years later, he had published The Pickwick Papers, Oliver Twist and Nicholas Nickleby, and was a literary superstar.

Speaking at the launch on Wednesday, curator Emma Harper said the exhibition “highlights the best bits of the collection, some items that have been here since 1925, some old favourites, and some new acquisitions.”

“A quarter of what you see we have never displayed before including a sketch for a portrait that we no longer have of a young, energetic Dickens starting off in Doughty Street with his young family and becoming a successful novelist.”

Blubber stained copy of David Copperfield read during Captain Scott’s 1910 Antarctica expedition on the Terra Nova while the crew were stranded in an ice cave for 60 days. (Image: The Dickens Museum) Museum Director Cindy Sughrue added that the exhibition celebrates the Museum’s “extraordinary and unrivalled collection of material connected to Dickens’s life, work and legacy.”

“Gathered together over the past century and displayed in Dickens’s only surviving house in London, the Museum is filled with objects that define Dickens’s life. The exhibition features personal effects, portraits, photographs and historic items that illuminate the life and works of Charles Dickens and the Museum’s role in preserving his legacy.”

Patrons and descendants Mark Dickens and Lucinda Dickens Hawksley attended the opening of the exhibition which runs until June 29.

Previously unseen sketch of Charles Dickens when he was living in Doughty Street believed to be by Samuel Laurence. (Image: Lewis Bush) It features previously unseen items, from an album of love poems written by Dickens aged 18 to Maria Beadnell, to a pastel sketch of the handsome 25-year-old writer when he was living in Doughty Street.

Also on display are the author’s only surviving suit of clothes, walking stick, quill and ink stand, alongside furniture, books, portraits, letters and original illustrations for books including Oliver Twist and A Christmas Carol.

Ranged across five floors, the museum evokes the young couple’s domestic life; a dining room laid for supper, the study where Dickens wrote, the cosy drawing room where he entertained guests, and the bedroom where they slept.

Crowds outside The Dickens Museum at the official opening in June 1925 on the 55th anniversary of Dickens’ death. (Image: The Dickens Museum) Among the poignant items on display are Millais’ sketch made on Dickens’ deathbed, tiny casement windows from Dickens’ childhood homes, and the grille at Marshalsea prison where his father was incarcerated as a debtor.

There is also his wedding certificate and engagement ring to wife Catherine, who he publicly banished from his life after 20 years of marriage and 10 children after he fell in love with an 18-year-old actress.

In 1923, 48 Doughty Street was purchased by the Dickens Fellowship and saved from demolition. After renovation, it was opened on 9 June 1925 as The Dickens House on the 55th anniversary of the author’s death.

Speaking to a crowd that crammed into the house and spilled onto the street The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Birkenhead addressed the crowd: “I cannot help thinking that he would have cherished the knowledge…that the house which he first rented in London, and to which he brought his young wife, the house in which Oliver Twist and Wackford Squeers and Kate Nickleby were all born, was for all time to be made available to the admirers of his genius.”

Dickens in Doughty Street runs until June 29 June at 48 Doughty Street, Holborn.