Art & Exhibitions
It’s the Best of Times for Dickens Fans! A New Show Spotlights Rarities Linked to the Author
Rare portraits of a young Dickens, private letters, and personal effects will go on show in at the author's former residence.
Ever wished you could travel back to the mean streets of Victorian London, the one described by the era’s most beloved writer, Charles Dickens? One place to start would be the townhouse at 48 Doughty Street near Bloomsbury that he once called home. Though he lived there only between 1837 and 1839, this was a particularly productive period, during which he wrote three books, including Oliver Twist.
The house is the only surviving property in which Dickens lived, and it narrowly escaped demolition thanks to the efforts of the Dickens Fellowship, an association that bought the property and turned it into a museum dedicated to the writer. It opened its doors in 1925 and, over the past 100 years, has invited visitors to step back into the year 1837 with many original features like fireplaces and fittings, period furnishings, and some of the author’s own belongings, as well as abundant information about his interests and way of life.
This year, the museum celebrates its centenary with the exhibition “Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum,” which will bring together highlights of the collection, including some of the most rarely seen treasures.
Prized among these is a chalk and pastel sketch of Dickens from the time when he was living in Doughty Street, and a miniature painting by artist Margaret Gillies that was made just a few years later, when he was writing A Christmas Carol. Most photographs record Dickens in his rugged middle age; these works capture a much more fresh-faced author, in his late 20s and early 30s.
Though the Gillies work was known to historians thanks to a surviving letter from Dickens to the artist, which will be displayed alongside the portrait, it had been considered lost for over 174 years. In 2017, it miraculously resurfaced in a cardboard box of trinkets headed to auction in South Africa. The museum raised the £180,000 ($225,000) necessary to acquire the miniature in 2019.
The portrait wasn’t the only art that the author admired. Also on show will be works by illustrators with whom he collaborated for various publications. The standout examples are pieces by renowned caricaturist George Cruikshank and John Leech’s early drafts of drawings that would appear in the first edition of A Christmas Carol.
Many more treats lie in store for Dickens enthusiasts. These include some of his very earliest pieces of writing, including an album of poems he produced at the tender age of 18. Of his personal correspondence, a standout is a draft letter to the family servant that contains the first paragraphs of the infamous “Violated Letter” from 1858, which frankly recounted the breakdown of his marriage.
The exhibition will also include original manuscripts and rare editions of many of Dickens’s most widely beloved works and other notable copies. One example is a David Copperfield that traveled to Antartica as part of Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s 1910–12 Terra Nova expedition. The worn tome still bears fingerprints and stains from the seal blubber that provided fuel for fires when extreme weather left the crew stranded in an ice cave. As well as by the warmth of the flames, the men’s spirits were raised by reading one chapter of Dickens’s book every night for 60 days.
Meanwhile, Victorian history buffs will be delighted to find items that reveal something of Dickens’s personal style and interests, including his hairbrush, walking stick, only surviving suit, binoculars, quill and ink stand, and marriage license. Archival photographs will provide additional insight.
“Gathered together over the past century and displayed in Dickens’s only surviving house in London, a beacon at the centre of the urban landscape quintessentially associated with the writer, the museum in Doughty Street will be filled with objects that define Dickens’s life and the museum’s history,” the museum’s director, Cindy Sughrue, told the BBC.
“Dickens in Doughty Street: 100 Years of the Charles Dickens Museum” is on view at the Charles Dickens Museum, 48 Doughty Street, London, February 5 through June 29.